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II 



AUTHORIZED REPORT 



e©eetmg.0 111 Defence of tU atf)ana0ia!t CiteD 

On JANUARY 31, 1873. 



yiUTHORIZED REPORT OF THE 

MEETINGS 

IN 



Wtltxitt of t!)e :at!)aiiagtan Creet? 



WHICH WERE HELD 



IN ST. JAMES'S HALL AND IN THE 
HANOVER SQUARE ROOMS 

On JANUARY 31, 1873. 



SECOND EDITION 

RIVINGTONS, WATERLOO PLACE. 

HIGH STREET I TRINITY STREET 

1873. 



TO THE 

FIVE HUXDKED R E P RESEN T AT 1 \' ES 
OF VAKIOUS TOWNS AND PLACES, 
■WHO AT MUCH PERSONAL INCONVENIENCE AND COST 
WERE PRESENT AT THE 

etinn; in ^ztzntt of tje ^t^ana^i'an €vtth, 

Jan. 31, 1873, 

this report of the proceedings, 
held under the presidency of ilr. j. g. hubbard at st. james's hall, 
and of the marquess of bath at the hanover square roo.ais, 



00 

O 



II 



It was aimomiced early in 1872, tliat tlie Bi.shops of tlie 
Province of Canterbury ^vould invite the Lower House of 
that Province to consider what method of dealing with the 
Athanasian Creed would tend to remove the diiBculties which 
it was alleged were occasioned by its present use in the 
Service of the Church of England ; a Committee of Clergy 
and Laity was therefore organized by the exertions of a few 
Laymen, and the following circular was issued to all the 
Parochial Clergy of England and Wales. 

"71, Dean Steeet, Soho Squaee, 
" Reverend Sir, " London, W.O. 

" We, the undersigned, beg leave to urge upon you very 
seriously the importance and necessity of obtaining the signatures 
of youi* parishioners to a petition, headed by yourself, to the Lower 
House of the Convocation of Canterbury, or to the Convocation of 
York (according to your province), in favour of maintaining the 
Athanasian Creed in its integrity in the Public Service of the 
Church." 

Beauchamp (Cliairman). 



Salisbury. 

Galloway, 

Glasgow, 

Nelson. 

Limerick. 

EicHARD Cavendish. 
Eliot. 

Yv^ ALTER FaRQUHAR. 

JoKN Taylor Coleridge. 

A. J. B. Beresford Hope, M.P. 

T. Collins, M.P. 

R. Brett. 

W. Butterfield. 

J. D. Chambers. 



W. C. Cocks. 
J. C. Meymott. 
T. Gambier Parry. 
H. E. Pellew. 
Gerald Ponsonby. 
G. Richmond, R.A. 
E. P. Shirley. 
W. P. HooE. 

E. M. GOULBURN. 

Edw\ Churton (Archdeacon). 
G. A. Denison „ 
Philip Freeman „ 
G. Prevost „ 
W. Bright, D.D. 



viii 



Form of Petition in 



J. S. Bp.ewer. 

"W. BUTLEK. 

W. K. Chuetox. 

b. comptox. 
Alwtxe Comptox. 

c. l. couetexay. 
C. B. Daltox. 
W. Dextox. 

J. DiTCHEE. 

F. E. Geet. 
E. KixG. 

The foUoicing forms of petition are in circulation. 

I. 

THE liiimble Petition of tlie undersigned Communicants of tlie 
Churcli of England showetli, that yonr Petitioners being j)er- 
suaded that the Doctrines of the Holy Trinity, of the Incar- 
nation of onr Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, of Eternal 
Punishment, and of the necessity of accepting God's revelation 
of Himself in the Christian dispensation, are thoroughly to be 
received and believed by all Christians, "for they may be 
proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture," and 
being further of opinion that the controversies of the present 
day require members of the Church to be duly reminded of 
these truths as set forth in the Confession of oui* Christian 
faith commonly called the Creed of Athanasius, earnestly 
pray your Venerable House to maintain the said Creed in its 
integTity, and not to consent to any proposal for its disuse, 
And your Petitioners vrill ever pray, &:c. 

II. 

THE humble Petition of the undersigned Commimicants of the 
Church of England showeth, that your Petitioners, being per- 
suaded that the Doctrines of the Holy Trinity, and of the 
Incarnation of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, as set forth 
in the Confession of our Christian faith, coiomonly called the 
Creed of S. Athanasius, are thoroughly to be received and 
believed, ea^rnestly pray your Venerable House to maintain 



EOBEET LiDDELL. 

H. p. LiDDox, D.D. 
P. G. Medd. 
T..W. Peeet. 
TT. PrLLixG. 
W. E. Scudahoee. 
E. Seyhoue. 
B. Webb. 
E. T. West. 
G. Williams. 



Defence of Athanasian Creed. 



ix 



the said Creed as it now stands in the Book of Common 
Prayer, and not to consent to any proposal for its disuse. 
And your Petitioners will ever pray, &c. 

III. 

THE humble Petition of the undersigned Members of the Church 
of England showeth, that your Petitioners, believing that the 
Doctrines set forth in the Athanasian Creed may be proved 
by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture, earnestly pray 
your Venerable House to maintain the said Creed in its 
integrity, and not to consent to any proposal for its disuse. 
And your Petitioners will ever pray, &c, 

lY. 

THE humble Petition of the undersigned Communicants of the 
Church of England showeth, that your Petitioners have learnt 
with much regret and alarm that proposals have been sub- 
mitted to your Reverend House for removing the Athanasian 
Creed from the Public Service of the Church of England, or 
for cutting out or abolishing certain Clauses of the said Creed. 

That your Petitioners are unable to reconcile either of these pro- 
ceedings with a loyal interpretation of the meaning and inten- 
tion of the Eighth Article of the Church of England. 

That your Petitioners cannot doubt that the effect of either of 
these proposed changes would be to weaken the strength of 
our Church's witness to the necessity of a right faith in the 
Doctrines of the Holy Trinity and of the Divine Incarnation 
in order to Eternal Salvation, and to cast a public slight and 
disparagement on these fundamental Doctrines. 

That your Petitioners apprehend the danger of serious schism if 
such revolutionary changes should be adopted. 

Your Petitioners therefore pray your Yenerable House to maintain 
this Creed in its integrity in that position which it has held 
since the last revision of the Book of Common Prayer in the 
Public Service of the Church of England. 

And your Petitioners will ever pray, &c. 

Y, 

THE humble Petition of the undersigned Clergy and Communis 
eants of the Church of England showeth, that your Petitioners 



X 



Tlie Fetiiioii presented io 



liave learnt vi-ith r v^:"! regret and alan i th^t rrj"'-a!s Iiave 
been snbniittc ' .r Heverend Ii _ v - : i i i iv ving tlie 

Athanasian Creed froia tlie Public SerYic. ^^va'cli of 

England, or for altering or abolishing cerr. v,.^- of tbe 

said Creed. 

That yoni' Petitioners cannot doii'it tl:-^.t the enect of eitber of the 
proposed changes would be '-"::.ken the strencrth of om.' 
Chnrch's witness to the necessity of a right in the 

Doctrines of the Holy Trinity and of the Diviii j Ii_.; ;.riiation 
in order to Eternal Salvation, and ij cv.--: a pitblic sli^rhi nnd 
d' ' " ":nent on those fcoidamenv:.! ^ 

That y . . ..doners apprehend serio" '. dj.ii, .-r v:- Zs::. jli.-hed 
Church if such r^vc-hitionaiy changes should be adopted. 

YvOin' Petitioners therefore pray your EcTerend Koii-e to maintain 
this Creed in its integrity in that i — hi:h ii has httLI 

since the ^- -'-ion of the Booh ci Coiomon Prayer in the 

Public Ser'/^ . _ ■ ^ the Church of England. 

And your Petitioners will ever pray, &c. 

Yl. 

THE humble Petition of the undersigned Clergy a:: 1 rt i-muni- 
cants of the Chm-ch of England showeth, thatyoui' Petitioners 
desire your Eeyerend House, in the exercise of your (jftic t and 
privilege, " to deliberate of and to dc' all --ich things as shall 
concern the settled continuance of the Z :otr:no atid Ei-^ciplino 
of the Church of England," not to con^si^t t j ony vorying 
or departing in the least deg:roe from that D'tetrine and 
DiscipEne. and pray that you will hrnily uphold the Order of 
the Chun-ch concerning the authority aiol. v.--: of 'the Three 
Creeds,' which the Eighth Article declares ought thoroughly 
to be received and believed." 

And your Petitioners will ever T>rayj Szc. 

Whea the Lower House of the CoiiTOcatioii of Canterbnry 
proceeded to the consideration of the qiiestiL'n remitted 
to it by the Bishops, nearly eight hundred petition?, couched 
in terms similar to the forms printed above, were presented 
in favour of the present use of the Athanasian Creed in its 
integrity. The signatures attached to these petitions, amount- 
ing in the aggregate to more than 38,000 lond fide Members of 



the House of Convocation. 



HI 



the Cliiircli of England/* were obtained without any pressure. 
Those Clergy, who thought the danger sufficiently imminent 
to call for active efforts in defence of the Creed, invited their 
Churchwardens and flocks to petition Convocation. 

The Lower House of the Convocation of Canterbury, 
when dealing with the subject, enjoyed the advantage of 
possessing authentic materials to guide them as to the 
opinion of the bulk of the laity, and all propositions which 
tended to impair the status of the Creed and its prescribed 
use in the Church of England having been rejected, it was 
ultimately resolved that his G-race the President be requested 
to appoint a Joint Committee to consider the question of a 
Synodical Declaration. 

The Joint Committee consisted of the following :— Upper 
House — The Bishops of London, Winchester, St. David's, 
Llandaff, Grloucester and Bristol, Ely, Norwich, Rochester, 
Lichfield, Peterborough, Hereford, Lincoln, Salisbury, Bath 
and Wells, Exeter, Oxford, Chichester, and St. Asaph. 

Lower House — The Prolocutor, the Dean of Canterbury, 
the Dean of Westminster, the Dean of St. Paul's, the Dean 



* The following is the authorized digest of the Petitions i^resented to the 
Lower House of the Convocation of Canterbury in the year 1.872 up to the 
end of the May Session. 



Trayer of Petition. 



No. of 
Petitions. 



No, of Signatures. 



Clergy. Laity. Undefined. 



For the retention of the three Creeds 

Athanasian Creed — 

For its maintenance as now used 

„ investigating its test 

„ relief in its use 

„ its omission from the Prayer Book 

„ delay in dealing with it 

„ omitting the Condemnatory Clauses 

„ making its use optional 

„ modifying it 

„ its disuse in public 

,, affixing a note to it 



766 
8 
4 
. 2 

- 6 
5 
4 
1 
5 
2 



1,661 
467 
19 
3 

221 
24 
80 

178 

4 



4,192 



64 



243 
3 



96 

32,607 
94 
10 



58 
9 

17 



xii 



The Joint Committee of Convocation. 



of Norwich, the Dean of Wells, the Dean of Eochester, the 
Dean of Lincoln (designate), the Archdeacon of CanterbiirVj 
the Archdeacon of Maidstone, the Archdeacon of London, 
the Archdeacon of Nottingham, the Archdeacon of Stafford, 
the Archdeacon of Taunton, the Archdeacon of Gloucester, 
the Archdeacon of Huntingdon, the Archdeacon of Exeter, 
the Archdeacon of Eochester and St. Alban's, the Archdeacon 
of Leicester, the Archdeacon of Surrey, the Archdeacon of 
Colchester, the xirchcleacon of Coventry, Archdeacon Eandall, 
Chancellor Massingberd, Canons Swainson, Selwyn, Seymour, 
Harvey, G-regory, Morley, Dr. Kay, Dr. Eraser, Dr. Jebb, 
Lord A. Compton, Mr. Gibbs, Mr. Kempe, Mr. Perry, Mr, 
Hopkins, Mr. Sumner, Mr. Puchle, Mr. How, Mr. Eagan, 
Mr. Bathurst. 

The Joint Committee was appointed to meet in December, 
but in the meantime the opponents of the Creed were not 
idle, and more than one memorial was presented to the 
Archbishop against the use of the Creed. 

It was therefore determined to hold a meeting at Leeds 
during the week of the Church Congress to consider what 
further steps should be taken in defence of the Creed. At 
this Meeting a new Committee* was formed to carry still 
further the work commenced in the previous spring. 

* The following is a complete list of the members of tlie Committee : — Tlie 
Duke of Marlborough, K.G. ; the Marquess of Salisbury ; the Marquess of 
Bath ; the Earl of Devon ; the Earl of Eldon ; the Earl of Haddington ; 
the Earl of G-lasgow ; the Earl of Limerick ; the Earl Nelson ; the Earl 
Beauchamp ; Earl of Kinnoul ; the Lord Eichard Cavendish ; the Lord Henry 
Scott, M.P. ; the Lord Eliot ; Bishop Claughton, Archdeacon of London ; the 
Rev. Lord A. Compton, M.A. ; the Hon. C. L. Wood ; the Hon. and Eev. C. L. 
Courtenay, M.A. ; the Hon. and Eev. H. Douglas, M.A. ; the Hon. A. Gerald 
Ponsonby, M.A. ; the Hon. and Eev. J. Grey, M.A. ; the Hon. and Eev. F. E. 
Grey, M.A. ; the Hon. and Eev. E. Liddell, M.A. ; the Hon. and Very Eev. 
the bean of York ; the Hon. P. C. Glyn ; Sir Stephen E. Glynne, Bart. ; Sir 
Walter E. Earquhar, Bart.; ,the Ven. Sir George Prevost, Bart., Archdeacon, 
Gloucester; the Eev. Sir J. H. Culme Seymour, Bart., M.A,, Canon of 
Gloucester ; Sir Edmund Lechmere, Bart. ; the Very Eev. the Dean of Chi- 
chester : the Very Eev. the Dean of Nor^Yich ; the Very Eev. the Dean of Eipon • 



The Athanasian Creed Defence Committee. 



xiii 



The following circular was accordingly issued at tlie end 
of IS"ovember. 

" Athanasian Creed Defence Committee. 

3, Wateeloo Place, Pall Mall, 
"London, S.W. 

" In compliance witli a wide-spread and weighty o|)inion among 
various classes of Churchmen that it is desirable that an influential 
Meeting of men should be held in London, to express the solemn 
conviction that the Athanasian Creed should be retained and be in 
use within the Church of England in its integrity as heretofore, 
the Athanasian Creed Defence Committee (of which we enclose the 
list) have taken steps to hold such Meeting on the evening of 
Friday, January olst, at St. James's Hall, at 8 o'clock, at which 
the Duke of Marlborough will preside. 

the Very Eev. the Dean of Manchester; the Yen. Edward Ohm'ton,M. A., Arch- 
deacon of Cleveland ; the Ven. G. A. Denison, M.A., Archdeacon of Taunton ; 
the Ven. P. Freeman, M.A., Archdeacon and Canon of Exeter ; the Ven. G. H. 
Hamilton, M.A., Archdeacon of Lindisfarne ; the Eev. A. K. Ashwell, Canon 
of Chichester ; H. Barnett, Esq., M.P. ; Eev. H. W. Beadon, MA. ; E. Brett, 
Esq. ; the Eev. Professor Brewer, M.A. ; the Eev. W. Bright, D.D., Canon of 
Christ Church, Eegius Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Oxford ; the Eev. J. 
W. Burgon, TvI.A. ; W. Butterfield, Esq. ; the Eev. W. J. Butler, M.A., Honorary 
Canon of Christ Church, Oxford ; the Eev. T. T. Carter, M.A., Honorary 
Canon of Oxford ; Eev. J. C. Chambers, M.A. ; J. D. Chambers, Esq. ; T. 
Collins, Esq., M.P. ; the Eev. J. D. Collis, D.D., Honorary Canon of Worcester ; 
the Eev. Berdmore Compton, M.A. ; the Eev. William Cooke, M.A., Honorary 
Canon of Chester ; Eev. W. Denton, M.A. ; the Eev. J. Ditcher, M.A. ; the 
Eev. T. Simpson Evans, M.A. ; the Eev. C. Wellington Furse, Vicar of Staines, 
nnd Chaplain to the BishojD of Oxford ; H. H. Gibbs, Esq. ; the Eev. Stephen 
E. Gladstone, M.A. ; W. H. Gladstone, Esq., M.P. ; the Eev. E. Gregory, 
M.A., Canon of St. Paul's ; the Eev. W. Gresley ; the Eev. J. Hannah, D.C.L., 
Vicar of Brighton ; E. Herford, Esq. ; C. L. Higgins, Esq. ; the Eev. G. H. 
Hodson, M.A. ; A. J. B. Beresford-Hope, Esq., M.P., Treasurer ; the Eev. H. 
J. Hotham, M.A., Vice-Master of Trinity College, Cambridge ; J. G. Hubbard, 
Esq.; the Eev. W. J. Irons, D.D., Prebendary of St. Paul's ; the Eev. John 
Jebb, D.D., Prebendary and Canon of Hereford ; S. T. Kekewich, Esq., M.P. ; 
the Eev. E. King, M.A., Eegius Professor of Pastoral Theology, Oxford ; the 
Eev. C. Kingsley, M.A., Canon of Chester; Eev. Francis Lear, M.A., Precentor 
of Salisbury ; the Eev. F. G. Lee, D.C.L. ; the Eev. H. P. Liddou, D.D., Canon of 
St. Paul's ; the Eev. H. E. Luard, M.A., Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, 
and Eegistrar of the University ; the Eev. Malcolm MacColl, M. A., Secretary ; 
the Eev. G. E. Mackarness, M.A. ; L. A. Majendie, Esq. ; Eev. M. W. Mayow, 
M.A., Eector of Southam, and Eural Dean ; the Eev. P. G. Medd, M.A. ; 



XIV 



Circular of the Gommitiee. 



" It is intended tliat the Meeting should not be one mainly 
composed of Clergymen, or of Londoners, but that it should repre- 
sent the feelings of that vast multitude of Churchmen throughout 
the country who would regard with the deepest regret any attempt 
to tamper with the Creed, or its use. 

" It would not meet to deliberate, to threaten, or to treat of any 
compromise, but simply to affirm that feeling with all earnestness, 
and all sobriety ; consec[uently it would not invite the presence of 
those who, while favoiu^able to the retention, in some shape, of 
more or less of the Athanasian Creed, are yet desirous of some 
alteration. At the same time the Committee do not wish to pledge 
you on the question of an explanatory note. 

" The Committee, believing you to be favourable to their views, 
earnestly entreat you to take counsel v/ith your friends in your 
County and neighbourhood who may be of the same o|)inion, and 
to hold such local meeting or meetings, of a more or less public or 
private character, as you and they may think expedient for the 
purpose of choosing representatives from your County and neigh- 
bourhood, to take part in the Meeting. 

" You will doubtless be able to enlist innuential helpers, lay 
and clerical, and for this purpose vve shall gladly send you as many 
circulars as you require. 

" It would be desirable that the representatives invited to take 
part in the London Meeting should, as far as possible, include not 
only Chnrehmen of all opinions favom^able to the retention of the 

Lierit.-Colonel E. Neville ; the Eev. F. Neville, M.A., Prebendary of Wells ,• 
Eev. J. W. Perry ; the Eev. N. Pocock ; the Eev. E. B. Piisey, D.D., Canon of 
Christ Church, Eegiiis Professor of Hebrew, Oxford ; the Eev. G. Eawlinsou, 
M.A., Canon of Canterbury, and Camden Professor of Ancient History, Ox- 
ford ; the Eev. W. Upton Eichards, M.A. ; G. Eicbmond, Esq., E.A. ; Josepli 
Eidgwaj-, Esq. ; tlie Eev. J. Fuller Eussell, B.O.L. ; Vice- Admiral A. P. 
Eyder; the Eev. M. F. Sadler, M.A., Prebendary of Yv^ells; the Eev. E. 
Seymour, I>I.A. ; the Eev. J. Sharp, M.A. ; C. B. Skinner, Esq. ; the Eev. J. 
Skinner, M.A.; J. A. Shaw Stewart, Esq.; George E. Street, Esq., E.A., 
Treasurer ; the Eev. W. Stubbs, M.A., Eegius Professor of Modern History, 
Oxford ; the Eev. P. Sutton, M.A. ; J. G. Talbot, Esq., M.P. ; the Eev. E. 
Talbot, M.A., Principal of Keble College, Oxford ; the Eev. Henry Temple, 
M.A., Secretary; the Eev. George Trevor, M.A., Prebendary and Canon of 
York; the Eev. Mackenzie E. C. Walcott, B.D., Precentor of Chichester; tlie 
Eev. P. Webb, M.A. ; the Eev. E. T. West, M.A. ; the Eev. G. C. White, 
M.A. ; the Eev. G. Williams, B.D. ; the Eev. E. F. Wilson, M.A. ; the Eev. N. 
Woodard, ]M.A., Canon of Maucliester ; the Eev. Cecil Wrny, M.A., Prebendary 
of Lichfield. 



Li&t of Towns sending Delegates, xv 

Atliauasian Creed, but members of all classes of society, including, 
besides Clergymen, landholders, professional men, farmers, and 
substantial tradesmen, and in particular Cburcbwardens. 

" IST.B. — You are particularly requested to answer (Address, 
Honorary Secretary, Atbanasian Creed Defence Committee, at 
Messrs. Eivingtons', V/ aterioo Place, London, S.W.), at your earliest 
convenience, wlietber you are willing to act, and if so, wben you 
propose to bold your local meeting, and in what form ; and also 
to write again after that meeting has been held, stating what took 
place, and whom you haye named as representatives. 

" The Committee will then be able to take stei3S to see that the 
representatives are accommodated at the London Meeting, to v/liich 
admission wall be given by ticket, and which v/ill be exclusively 
composed of men. 

" This circular has been sent to the subjoined persons* in your 
County, and it is suggested that you and they should, as far as 
possible, concert 3-our action together. Tlie list having been dravrn 
up BO hastily is necessarily imperfect. 



" Malcolm MacGoll, ^ 
Eector of St. Oeorge, BotolpJi 
Lane, London. 

" Henry Temple, 

Vicar of St. John's, Leeds. 



Hon. Secretaries." 



In consequence of this circular, Meetings of Yarions 
degrees of importance -were held all over England, at which 
representatives vvere chosen to attend the London Meeting. 
Thirty-six counties of England and WaleSj and upward;^ 
of 120 towns and populous places, sent up representatives-', 
exceeding in number 500, not only of all ranks, and classes, 
but also representing various schools of theological opinion. 

The names of the towns and places are here subjoined. 

BERES.—Reading, Chilton, Newbury, Wallingford. 
Bucks.— Fenny Stratford, Slough, Windsor. 
Cambridgeshire. — Cambridge. 
Cornwall.— Hayle. 



Tiie iiameR of k^adino,' nersoiis in tiio neidibomliood were snbiomed. 



xTi List of Towns sending Delegates. 

CmrBERLAXD. — Carlislej Penritli . 
Derbtshiee . — D erlj 7 . 

Dbvonshiee. — Exeter. Barnstaple,. Devonx^ort. Ilfracomle. Plr- 
riioiitli, Torquay. 

DoESETSHiEE. — Wimboriie, Yetminster. 
DuEHAAi. — Dm^liam; Jliddleton S. George. 
Essex. — Eural Deanery of Hedingliam. 

Gloucesteeshibe. — Gloucester; Bristol. Cheltenliain. Cliipping 
Sodbuiy. 

Haxts. — Wincliester. Basingstoke. Broughton - in - Eomsey, 
Hui'sley, Byde. Southampton. 
Heeefoedshiee. — Hereford. 

HEETFOEDsaiEE, — Hertf-i-rd; Bnntingford. Hiteliiu. 
HuxTS. — S. Ives. 

Kext. — Canterbury, Bexley, Bromptou. Cliatliam. Dartford, 
Deptford, Folkestone. Gillingliani, Greenhitke. Havrkkurst. Lee, 
Lewiskani; 3Iaidstone, Xortkiieek Bockester. Strood. Sydenkam, 
Tunbridge Wells^ Woohvieb; Woolwick Dockyard. 

Laxcashiee. — Manckester, Accrington, Barrovr-in-Furness, 
Liverpool, Preston, Warrington, Wigan. 

Leicesteeshiee. — Leicester. 

LrxcoLxsHEEE. — Lincoln. Gainsborougk,Glandford Brigg. Sleaford. 

Middlesex. — City of London. Bo^ Common. Barnes. Bronipton, 
Clapton. Finsbury. Fulkam. Hackney. Hammersmitk. Kensington, 
"West Kensingtuu. Eilburu. SS. Jdarylebone and Pancras. Pad- 
dington. Stuke XevdngtoU; '\'\ esiminster. 

NoEFOLK. — Xorwick, Lynn. "West Norfolk. 

NoETHAMPTOXSHiEE. — Xortkampton, Daventry. 

XoETHUiiBEELAXD. — Xewcastle-on-Tyne, Alnvrick, Jiorpetk. 

XoTTS. — Xottingkam. East Eetford. Xewark. 

OxFOEDSHiEE. — Baubury. Ckipping Xorton, Oxford, Witney. 

Sheopshiee. — Skrevrsbury. Ludlovr. 

SoMEESETSHiEE. — Batli. Tauntou, Wells, Weston-super-Mare. 

Staffoedshire. — Yv'olverkampton, Wombom-ne. 

Sijffole:. — Beccles. 

SuPvEET. — Lambetk, Dorking. 

Sussex. — Ckickester, Brigkton. S. Leonards-on-Sea. 
Waewickshiee. — Birmingkam. Coventry, Bugby. Strati(^rd-ou= 
Avon. 

Wilts. — Salisbiuy, Malmesbmy, Warminster. 
WoECESTEESHiEE. — Worcestcr, ivlalyern. 



Letter from a Working Man, 



xvii 



YoKKSHiRE. — York, Barnslev, Bradford, Bridlington, Halifax, 
Harrogate, Huddersfield, Hull, Leeds, Eotherham, Scarborough, 
Sheffield, Wakefield. 

Wales. — Bangor, Cardigan, Cyfeiliog, S. Asaph, Swansea, Tenbj. 

The Athanasian Creed is, supposed by many to be a 
gtumbling-block in the way of the unlearned especially. 
The Committee have received numerous proofs during the 
last few months that this objection has been hazarded some- 
what hastily. The following is one of several letters which 
have been sent to the Committee. It was written and 
printed in answer to a request that the writer, a genuine 
working man, would sign Lord Shaftesbury's petition against 
the Creed, and the Committee publish it here by way of 
evidence that, if the Athanasian Creed were tampered with, 
the working classes would not be the least aggrieved portion 
of the community. In a note, enclosing the subjoined letter 
to the Committee, the writer expresses his indignation that 
" a few dissatisfied members of the Church should demand 
an alteration in our ancient Creed, without consulting the 
wishes of the whole ; " and adds,—" I am a poor man ; but 
I have as much right to defend my Creed as a rich one has 
to attack it, and had I the means I would rouse Churchmen 
from their sleeping." 

The letter shows that the writer of it is unlearned ; but it 
also shows that he takes an intelligent interest in questions 
in respect to which his class is supposed to be ignorantly 
indifferent. The following is a verbatim reprint of it. 

A Letter to tJie Members of the National Church on the 
Athanasian Creed. 

" Brethren, — A petition against an ancient Creed of our National 
Church, commonly called the Athanasian Creed, has been signed by 
several persons, and signed, I think, without a due consideration of 
what they were doing. 

" I beg your kind attention to the following few remarks on the 
Creed, the doctrine of the Trinity, and on the Petition. 

h 



xvm 



Letter from a ]Vorhing Man 



" I divide the Creed into two parts, whether rightly or not I leave 
to those who are wiser than myself. The first part contains the 
first sixteen verses, to He, therefore, &c. ; the second part, the 
remainder. 

" The Creed, I think, was used in the time of St. John and his 
disciples, and taught by word of mouth to those who were about to 
be baptized. 

" Whosoever will be saved. Who — in like manner — ever will be 
saved. In what manner? According to the Christian form. 

" In my humble opinion the Creed in the first three verses thus 
speaks : — Thou art about to be Christianized, and first of all thou 
must believe in the true Faith taught by all true disciples of Christ 
in all His churches, throughout all lands, and thou must steadily 
keep in this faith. 

" Thou must not be uncertain, or waver in thy mind whether 
thou must hold to thine own religion or to the religion of Christ ; 
for, if thou art unsteadfast in thy faith thou wilt, without doubt, 
perish (decay) from that eternal life which is given through Jesus 
Christ. 

" Thou must be baptized in the Name of the Father, and of the 
Son, and of the Holy Ghost ; and the Catholick Faith is this, thou 
shalt worship One Name in three Names, Father, Son, and Holy 
Ghost, and the Three Names in One Name, the great I AM. 

" I consider that the definition of the Trinity as given from these 
words. Neither confounding the Persons, &c., to the words. But the 
whole Three Persons are co- eternal, &c., was used to keep the con- 
verts from idolatry, and to guard them against thinking that there 
were three Gods or three Lords, and is such a kind of teaching as 
a disciple of Christ would use to one wishing to be instructed in 
the Catholick Faith. 

" The words — thus think — refer to the worshipping of the Unity 
in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity, and though many persons 
prate about these words — thus think — yet are there but very few 
who speak of these words — thus act — and if any man ridicule the 
definition of the Trinity given by the Creed, let him produce a 
better one. 

" The second part beginning at the words. Furthermore, &c., to 
the latter part of the .twenty-fifth verse, So God and Man is one 
Christ, is a declaration of the Church's belief in the Incarnation of 
our Lord Jesus Christ, and a similar kind of teaching is used as is 
used in the first part ; and the two parts, in the early age of the 
Church, were drawn up in the form, or written Creed, as now used, 
and for centuries it has been received as the Creed of the Holy 
Catholick Church ; and, in spite of the mockery of the scornful, it 
is a joyful truth for all mankind, that Christ is God of the Substance 
of the Father begotten before the world, and Man of the Substance 
of our Sister born in the world ; and if any man ridicule the truth 
of the immaculate conception, I shall feel obliged if he will answer 



defending the Athanasian Creed. 



XIX 



the following questions : — First, give in the English language a 
correct definition of the word Substance used in the Creed ; second, 
tell by what Law of Nature were our common ancestors brought 
into life ? 

" Of the Holy Tkinity. 

"St. Peter says — God's holy men spake, taught by the Holy 
Ghost. 

" The Holy Ghost taught the prophets of the Old and the disciples 
of the New Testament, and He strengthened them in their labours, 
and He comforted them in their suiferings. He taught the writer 
of the Book of Genesis that — in the beginning God created the 
heaven and the earth. St. John — that all things were made by 
Jesus. Isaiah— a virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and his 
name shall be Immanuel, God with (joined to) us. St. Paul — God 
was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself. St. John — This 
is the true God and eternal life. And St. Peter bears this testi- 
mony to all the world — That God's holy men spake, not according 
to their own will, but that they wrote according to His inspiration, 
who is the Sanctifying Teacher of all God's elect. 

" Of the Petition [of Loed Shaftesbury]. 

" All persons who are rightly baptized must, according to the 
command of Christ, be baptized in the name of the Father, of the 
Son, and of the Holy Ghost ; and our Lord added these words, ' He 
that believe th and is baptized shall he saved, and he that belie veth 
not shall he damned. ' 

"I think that the Petitioners ought to petition that this con- 
demnatory clause should be first struck out of the New Testament, 
ere they petition that it should be erased from the Creed, for should 
it be taken from the Creed, this solemn declaration of our Lord, 
that the cursed shall depart from Him into everlasting fire (and 
which is repeated in verse 29 of the Creed) will still remain in the 
Scriptures, and, with the other, will be read in our National 
Church, unless man become so wise as to have a Bible of reason 
read to the congregation instead of the Bible of God. 

" Whether these words of Our Saviour are to be interpreted 
according to the letter, or not, I leave unto Him, ' in whose hand 
is the soul of every living thing and the spirit of all mankind.' 

" We profess to believe in the Trinity, and we were baptized in 
these three names. Father, Son, Holy Ghost ; and the Creed teaches 
that He who, in like manner, ever will be saved, must keep in this 
Faith. 

" We are told by St. John that in Jesus is the life, that we must 
honour the Son even as we honour the Father ; and if we have not 
the Son we have not the life ; then, if we have not this life, which 



XX 



Letter from, a Worhing Man. 



is tlie light of man, must we not have the death and the darkness. 
Quarrel not with your Creed for speaking as the Scriptures speak ; 
neither mutilate your Creed because some men, in their conceit, 
would have you think as they think ; for should you do so, be 
mindful of this — In rejecting your Creed you will reject your 
Church also. 

" We are taught to worship One God in Trinity and the Trinity 
in One God — The Lord God Almighty, The Father uncreate, 
Almighty, The Son incomprehensible, God the Holy Ghost, 
eternal, Lord ; also, to believe rightly the Incarnation of Our 
Lord Jesus Christ (Matt. i. 18-25 ; St. Luke i. 30-80) ; and in my 
humble opinion, the Creed, in language both elegant and simple, 
endeavours to explain those mysteries ; and if words cannot be 
found to define them, yet an excellent attempt is made to convey 
the ideas of the writers ; and if a simpleton mock at the words 
used, a wise man will receive them with respect. 

" Many persons have prattled concerning these two words — 
perish everlastingly — and have spoken of the Creed in a manner 
that has plainly showed their zealous wisdom. If you will 
examine the original and true meaning of these two words, I 
think you will find it to be — to ruin, ever continuing the road. 
Believe the Gospel of Christ and be saved ; reject it, and remain 
in the way to be lost. 

" I do not expect you to think as I think ; but I sincerely 
hope that you will twice think ere you once sign a petition 
against our Gospel Creed. 

" There is a struggle commenced, and you will shortly be 
compelled to take a part, not only in the Babel of opinions, 
whether the whole or a part of the Creed shall be rejected ; 
whether the Church of our forefathers must stand or fall; but 
in other things also, when your faith and zeal will be tested by 
the incidents surrounding you. 

" Being unskilful in language, I respectfully trust you will 
not censure my plain manner of speaking; also, that you will 
kindly pardon the liberty taken in addressing you ; and in 
conclusion, 

" I humbly pray that He who said to the turbulent waves of , the 
sea. Peace, be still, will grant unto you and to all Christians that 
peace which this world has not the power to give, and in the world 
to come, life everlasting." 



Letter from the Bean of Bifon. 



XXI 



The Dean of Ripon, being unable to attend the meeting in 
St. James's Hall, published the following letter in ' The Times ' 
of January 30 : — 

"To THE Editor of 'The Times.' 

"The Deanery, Ripon, 
" January 28. 

" Sir, — Some months ago your columns were opened to a discussion of 
the Athanasian Creed question, and your own sentiments upon the subject 
were freely expressed. A renewal of that discussion is imminent ; and 
although my convictions are not in accordance with the course you 
advocated, yet, as I am no longer able to encounter the fatigue of Synodicai 
debate, I venture to hope you will do me the favour to publish my plea 
for the Creed. 

" The real question at issue is not one of authorship, or antiquity, or trans- 
lation. We have the Creed ; we have long used it ; we have solemnly 
declared our conviction of its Scriptural truth (Art. VIII.). The questions 
now agitated are — Shall we continue to use it as heretofore ? or shall we 
cease to use it in public worship altogether? or shall we leave it optional 
with every officiating minister to use it or not, as he thinks best ? or shall 
we modify it in some way that will render it at once more unequivocal and 
less offensive ? 

" The chief objections to its Liturgical use, which have been so powerfully 
and infiuentially urged, even by those who are fully persuaded of its truth, 
are the obnoxious character of its damnatory clauses, and the bewildering 
mysteriousness of its definitions. With all these fully before me, sincerely 
sympathizing with much that has been feelingly said, and earnestly de- 
siring to persuade and in no wise to wound, I am constrained to advocate 
the continued use of the Creed for the following reasons : — 

" 1. Because it supplies a want. 

" There are indications around us, neither few nor obscure, of a disposition 
to get rid of all Creeds and of all distinctive religious truth. Into that wider 
question I do not now enter ; but if we are to have a ' form of sound 
words ' at all, it ought, I think, to be comprehensive of fundamental truth. 
In this direction the Athanasian Creed is valuable, recognizing as it does, 
and resting upon, important portions of Eevelation to which no testimony 
is borne by the other Creeds of the Church. 

" The first of these I would specify is the revelation of a righteous judg- 
ment of every man ' according to his works.' It is impossible for language 
to reveal anything more unequivocally than this is revealed. Its importance 
will not be denied. And yet there is no confession of it, or reference to it 
with any distinctness, in either the Apostles' Creed or the Nicene Creed. 
This want is supplied by the Athanasian Creed. 

" Again, and to approach the heart and core of the controversy where it 
presses most keenly upon sensitive minds, a vital portion of Revelation, on 
which the Church of England at least is emphatic (Art. IX.) is this : — That 
by the transgression of the first man — the parent stock of all men — the 
whole human race come into this world in such a state of alienation from, 
and enmity against, the Creator, as amounts to misery when brought face 
to face with Him. To this truth and its tremendous consequences there is 
no reference in the other Creeds. To the denial of this truth may be traced 
many, if not all, of the heresies which have rejected or corrupted Chris- 
tianity. And most naturally ; for as with a disease so with its remedy. If 



xxii 



Letter from the Dean of Bi])on. 



the disease be partial or superficial, a remedy of the same character will be 
sufficient. Such are all the remedies prescribed by man's wisdom. 

" The damnatory clauses of the Athanasian Creed are based, as I read 
them, on this truth — To ' perish everlastingly ' is to remain in our natural 
state unreconciled to God. It does not of necessity involve any further 
infliction, whether for unbelief, or misbelief, but simply to remain in the 
estrangement of the fall ; the misery endm'ed varying in degree with the 
antecedent opportunities, cultivation, and consequent sensitiveness of the 
sufferer ; the same state of things around them being ' more tolerable ' 
{av^KTorepov) for one than for another. 

" In the teaching of Christ, to have heard and known and rejected the way, 
the only way, of deliverance, is imaged by a servant who ' knew his Lord's 
will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to His will.' He shall 
' perish everlastingly,' with aggravation of self-reproach. ' He shall be 
beaten with many stripes.' To have lived and died in ignorance of the 
way is imaged by a servant who ' knew not his Lord's will, and did 
commit things worthy of stripes.' Ignorant of his Lord's revealed law, he 
had a law of conscience within himself, by the violation of which he did 
commit things worthy of stripes. He shall 'perish everlastingly' with 
comparative mitigations. 'He shall be beaten with few stripes.' There 
is no deliverance from stripes for either ; but it is ' more tolerable ' for 
Tyre and Sidon than for Chorazin and Bethsaida — more tolerable, that is 
all, for Sodom than for Capernaum. 

" The way, the only way, of deliverance is inseparable from the Trinity and 
the Incarnation — the Trinity and the Incarnation as defended against divers 
specious denials and perversions. There is no attempt in the Athanasian 
Creed to explain the revealed mystery, but only to define with accuracy 
what is revealed. I do not say that this is so perfectly done that it cannot 
be improved. I do not claim infallibility for the Creed ; but in the face of 
ancient heresies revived, and modern heresies multiplied, I plead for the 
propriety and even the necessity of a defensive description of the truth. 

" A direct statement of truth ought to be sufficient for the Church, as a 
direct statement of law ought to be sufficient for the nation. But as the 
ingenuity of crime compels an enlargement of the Statute Book, so the inge- 
nuity of heresy compelled an enlargement of the Creed. 

" There is a very natural and very amiable repugnance in the human heart 
to admit the painful feeling of contemplating the state of any of our fellow- 
creatures as a state of irremediable misery — a state of moral estrangement 
without hope from Him ' in whose favour is life.' This repugnance lies at 
the root of much uncertainty of conviction, if not of actual unbelief. Under 
its secret and unsuspected influence the plainest language of revelation is 
forced into a non-natural sense. The charitable emotions of philanthr6py 
obscure, so as practically to erase, the awful announcements of Divine 
truth. I dare not take this course, though my flesh trembles at the bearing 
of those announcements upon our fallen race. I am driven, though on my 
knees, to a full agreement with Lord Bacon, where he says that as it is our 
duty to yield the obedience of practice to the commandments of God, licet 
reluctetur voluntas, so it is our duty to yield the faith of assent to the 
mysteries of God, licet eluctetur ratio, and, I may add, charitas. 

" A Christianity which is only one way of salvation, and not the one only 
way, is not the Christianity of the Bible, nor of history. As one of many 
ways, it might have found a peaceable place in the all-tolerating Pantheon. 
It was its claim to be the only way that raised the storm. The same is 
true now. 



Letter f rom the Bean of Rijpon. 



xxiii 



" Many who bear tlie Christian name are not believing Christianity, and 
many who are believing it, sincerely and tenderly believing, are at the 
same time shrinking from any open and bold avowal of it. They are not 
' valiant for the truth ' of God in that aspect of it which seems unchari- 
table towards men. This is the secret of the pain and irritation occasioned 
by the ' damnatory clauses.' 

" If these clauses be expressed with needless harshness or severity, and if 
the Scriptural truths to which they bear witness can be expressed in words 
less repugnant to our feelings, it would, indeed, be a work worthy the 
highest wisdom of the Church to effect the alteration. But, as ' a faithful 
witness and keeper of Holy Writ,' we dare not remove this ancient land- 
mark until we are supplied with a better. 

" On this gi'ound I, for one, would respectfully request our brethren who 
differ from us in this matter to consider that what we ask them to consent 
to, until some satisfactory alteration can be devised, is only to continue to 
do what they have been doing all their lives, conscientiously, though pain- 
fully doing, whereas what they are asking us to do is a new thing, which 
we have never done : it is to pass our Christian year without the authori- 
tative use of any symbol of this part of our testimony. What we ask of 
them would be urgent for some improvement. What they ask of us would 
be a confession of impotence to improve. And why should we so despair ? 

" Objections to the mysterious definitions in the Creed are not so formid- 
able, and happily so, for mystery is inevitable. My conviction is that if 
the Athanasian Creed were silenced, in deference to the dissatisfaction com- 
plained of on this ground, we should hear of similar dissatisfaction at the 
public recital of the Nicene Creed ; and if that were removed, the objections 
would follow to the Apostles' Creed. In point of fact, during a long and 
somewhat varied experience, the clause most pointedly objected to by the 
few — the very few — laymen who have ever expressed to me any painful 
difficulty, has been ' conceived by the Holy Ghost.' 

" Statements concerning the Godhead, being all in matters of thought, and 
wholly above our reason, are comparatively easy to faith ; but this one, 
abutting on matter which is within our reach, is felt to be not only a 
demand on our faith, but an assault on our reason. Yet this is the Divine 
foundation fact, without which Christianity must dwindle down as one 
among many human speculations. 

" 2. Further, I value the Athanasian Creed, because it contains an epithet 
descriptive of our Lord's flesh which is more precisely Scriptural, and more 
unequivocally intelligible, than the general statements of the other Creeds. 
The clause I refer to is this : — 

" ' Of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting.' 

" The Apostle of the Gentiles, in his sublime discourse on the resurrection 
of the body, said, 'AH flesh is not the same flesh ; but there is one kind of 
flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds.' 
There may possibly be others still not enumerated by the Apostle. There 
may possibly be flesh possessing properties which none of these possess. 
There may be flesh which can be present without being visible, which can 
be eaten without being tasted, which may be sacrificed without any 
shedding of blood, which may be at one and the same time in more places 
than one. We are not called upon to deny possibilities. We dare not say 
that anything of the kind is impossible with God. But when we are 
required to believe anything of the kind we ask for the Divine warrant. 
Where and what is the announcement ? Show us the inspired Word, and 



XXIV 



Letter from the Bean of Bipon. 



we veil our faces in profoundest reverence ; but in the absence of sucb 
authority we pause and reason. To say that the mystery to be believed is 
' ineffable ' is to acknowledge that it cannot be expressed in words, and 
therefore is not revealed. Much that is far above our reason, much that is 
unintelligible we are willing to believe, and do believe, because it is plainly 
expressed in words which are reasonably proved to be of Divine authority. 
But we are altogether unwilling to believe what is ' ineffable.' 

" Human flesh is not unintelligible. We are reasonably acquainted with 
its properties, and we know as assuredly as we can know aaything that it 
cannot be present without being visible, that it cannot be eaten without 
being tasted, that it cannot be sacrificed without bloodshedding, and cannot 
at one time be in more places than one. 

" The flesh of our Saviour Christ is human flesh. So the Church Catholic 
describes Him of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting. This is 
proved by most certain warrant of Holy Scripture. ' For the children,' 
the human children to be redeemed, ' being partakers of flesh and blood, 
He also himself likewise took part of the same.' To this He himself 
appealed after his resurrection, saying, 'Handle me and see, for a spirit 
hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have.' Therefore we know as 
assuredly as we can know anything, that the flesh of our Saviour Christ 
cannot be present without being visible, cannot be eaten without being 
tasted, cannot be sacrificed without shedding of blood, and, as our own 
branch of the Church Catholic plainly declares, cannot at one time be in 
more places than one. 

'* I could say more in defence and commendation of the Athanasian Creed, 
but I fear my letter has already become inconveniently long. 

" Your obedient servant, 

"Hugh M'Neile." 



On Friday, January 31st, 1873, a Meeting Avas held in 
St. James's Hall, for the purpose of protesting against any 
interference ^vith the form or the use of the Quicunque Vult in 
the service of the Church. A large number of tickets had 
been issued in excess of the accommodation of the Large 
Hall, in consequence of which a supplementary Meeting was 
held simultaneously in Hanover Square Kooms. 

The Duke of Marlborough had promised to take the Chair, 
but owing to his recent severe illness was unable to do so, 
and his place was taken by Mr. J. G. Hubbard. From the 
beginning to the end," says the ^ Guardian,' " the greatest 
enthusiasm prevailed, and the immense applause that greeted 
Dr. Liddon and the mention of Dr. Pusey's name can never 
be forgotten by those present, the whole assembly rising up 
and again and again renewing their cheers." 

Before the business of the Meeting commenced, 

Mr. Beeesford Hope, M.P., said — His Grace the Duke of 
Marlborough, to his great regret, is unable, owing to the severe 
indisposition with which he has been visited, to take the Chair. 
The Committee has invited Mr. Hubbard to take his place, and 
Mr. Hubbard has kindly consented ; but before the proceedings 
begin, I will read the letter of the Duke of Marlborough. 

" My deae Mr. Hope, — In consequence of a recent severe attack 
of illness I regret that it will not be in my power to be present and 
preside at the meeting to be held on Friday next in St. James's Hall, 
as an expression of public feeling in favour of the retention in its 
unmutilated form of the Athanasian Creed. My original engage- 
ment to preside at the meeting will be the best proof of the sincere 
sympathy I have with its object, and although circumstances have 
prevented that engagement, my earnest hope is that the result of the 
meeting — which, I doubt not, will be much more ably presided over 
— will show unmistakably that Churchmen of all shades of ojpinion 
unite in a common determination to resist any attempt to mutilate 
or excise a Creed which has always commanded the reverence and 
consent of the Christian world. — Believe me, yours sincerely, 

'•Marlborough." 

B 



2 



Mr. J. G-. Huhhard. 



The Dean of Yoek then said the Collect for Trinity 
Sunday, and the Lord's Prayer; all present repeating the 
latter. 

The Chairman. — This meeting will have learnt with great 
regret that his Grace the Duke of Marlborough is unable to 
fulfil his promise to preside here to-day. The Duke has been 
very seriously ill, and, although now happily convalescent, he is 
still unequal to the exertion of taking the chair. The Committee 
cherished as long as possible the hope that his Grace might aid 
by his presidency here the all-important cause in which he has 
expressed so deep an interest; and the necessity for providing 
another chairman upon the eve of the meeting, and when those 
who might have adequately replaced him had already accepted 
their several parts in the proceedings, v/ill serve to excuse the 
Committee for having assigned the presidency to one who, undis- 
tinguished by theological learning or high position, has great need 
of your indulgence in the discharge of the duties which he under- 
takes in compliance with their request. (Cheers.) This meeting 
is gathered to deprecate, and if needful to resist, an agitation di- 
rected against the present use and position of the Athanasian Creed. 
(Cheers.) The proposals adverse to the Creed are many and mul- 
tiform, but I will allude only to the five which occur to me as the 
principal. It has been projDOsed — That the use of the Creed be 
restricted to fewer occasions ; that the use of the Creed be alto- 
gether optional ; that the Creed be excluded from the Book of 
Common Prayer, and be appended to the Articles ; that the so-called 

Damnatory Clauses " be expunged ; that a Parliamentary indem- 
nity be provided for the clergy who may break the law of the 
Church by omitting the use of the Creed. To these proposals the 
obvious replies are — That to restrict even to a single day the occa- 
sions on which the Athanasian Creed is authoritatively used would 
not satisfy those who object to the Creed itself ; that to make the 
use of the Creed optional would be to introduce a new element of 
disunion into the Church, and create dissensions between the clergy 
and their congregations ; that the banishment of the Creed from its 
present position and use in the public service of the Church to the 
region of the Thirty-nine Articles would be a cruel and intolerable 
privation to those who find in its clear and unfaltering utterance 
the priceless foundations of their faith ; that it is not within the 
competency of a single branch of Christ's Church to make changes 



Mr. J. G. Huhhard. 



3 



in a Creed wliicli is the inlieritance of the whole Catholic Church ; 
that to provide by statute an immunity for a breach of ecclesiastical 
law would fail to remove the conscientious difficulty of any loyal 
clergy, and would create an injurious antagonism between the law 
of the Church and the law of the State. (Cheers.) But although 
the proposals I have now dealt with be inadmissible, it must not 
be assumed that the agitation for some change as regards the Atha- 
nasian Creed may not partly proceed from loyal men who would 
suffer real disquiet in their enunciation of the so-called Damnatory 
Clauses. I for one cannot deny it — for I can recall the time when 
I shrank from i)ronouncing them as they occurred in the recital of 
the Creed, although the retrospect carries me over more than fifty 
years, to the age of early youth, and although study and obser- 
vation entirely removed the difficulty I then felt, by showing me 
that the warning clauses in the Creed are to be taken in the same 
sense, and with the same limitations, as the words of our Lord and 
his Apostles, of which they are virtually the iteration. I cannot 
doubt that much, if not all, of the dissatisfaction which has been 
expressed would vanish if the clergy generally were more learned, 
and the laity generally were better taught. I say this with reluc- 
tance, but with no doubt as to the fact. I have seen a pamphlet adverse 
to the Athanasian Creed, by a clergyman, who attempted to demon- 
strate the unreasonableness of insisting upon the acceptance of its 
clauses, by pointing out that one of those clauses declared God to 
be " incomprehensible " — interpreting, in his own mind, as " inca- 
pable of being understood," a word which he should have known 
meant "incapable of being confined or limited." And so, again, 
the charge of uncharitable condemnation of the uninstructed is 
advanced by some who are unmindful that in order that a man 
may " hold " or may " keep " the faith it must first be presented to 
him. Whether it be possible to devise an authoritative declaration 
of the true sense and application of the warning clauses, which 
would dissipate the prejudice against them, is an important question, 
but one not included in our present consideration. Our purpose is 
to discuss and adopt resolutions touching an agitation which en- 
dangers the essential doctrines of Christianity. The discussion, to 
be successful, must be conducted with firmness, but with calmness, 
and, above all, with charity. It has been painful to observe in the 
course of this controversy, angry, resentful, and contemptuous ex- 
pressions, sadly incongruous with the consideration of the nature 
of the God of Love ; but no uncharitable spirit will, 1 feel confi- 

B 2 



4 



Mr. Beresford Hope. 



dent, be allowed to mar the proceedings or impair the influence of 
this important meeting. (Loud cheering.) 

Mr. Beresford Hope. — The Chairman has given me permission 
to read some letters from distinguished persons who are unable to 
be present. The first letter I shall read is from Bishop Eyan, no'v 
Yicar of Bradford : — 

" My Lord, " Vicaeage, Bkadfoed, Jan. 28, 1873. 

" I regret very much that I am not able to attend the meet- 
ing on the 31st. The resolution which you have asked me to 
support is so entirely in accordance with my own convictions, that 
I should have felt it a privilege to have the opportunity of doing 
so. The reason why I cannot attend is that there is to be a public 
meeting in Bradford on that evening, in connection with the move- 
ment for the suppression of the slave-trade in Eastern Africa ; and 
as that abominable traffic was brought under my notice very 
specially during the thirteen years of my work in Mauritius, and 
again in the summer of last year, I feel a special obligation to 
attend the meeting in Bradford, having already done so in Leeds 
and other towns in the North as well as in London. 

" I hope you will have a successful meeting, — and remain, my 
Lord, your very faithful servant, 

" Vincent W. Ryan (Bishop). 
" The Right Honourable Earl Beauchamp." 

The second is from the Right Hon. Gathorne Hardy, addressed 
to Lord Beauchamp : — ■ 

^' My dear Beauchamp, "Hemstead Paek, Jan. 26. 

" Although I have doubts as to the advisability of a public 
meeting in reference to the Athanasiau Creed, I heartily accept the 
resolutions which it is proj)osed to move and to adopt. At a time 
when we most need to be held to our moorings it would be most 
unwise to neglect or let slip an anchor which hss for so many ages 
assisted to hold us securely. I hope the agitation for changes, any 
of which would grieve many consciences, may cease when it is 
seen how serious might be the result. — Believe me, yours very 
sincerely, 

" Gathorne Hardy." 
The next is from the Rev. Charles Kingsley to Mr. MacColl. 

" EVEBSLET EeCTOEY, WiNCKPIELD, 

" Dear Mr. MacColl, January 31. 

" I am, to my regret, unable to be present at the meeting to- 
night. But I cannot let it pass without asking leave to ex^Dress my 
fstrong sympathy with its object. 



Mr. Beresford Hoj^e. 



5 



I have long held tliat the general use and understanding of the 
Athanasian Creed by the Church of England would exercise here- 
after (as it has exercised already) a most potent and salutary influ- 
ence, not only on the theology, but on the ethics, and on the 
science, physical and metaphysical, of all English-speaking nations. 

" I believe that that influence was never more needed than now 
since the great French revolution of the last century ; and I am 
therefore the more jealous at this moment of the safety of the 
Athanasian Creed. 

" I feel for, though I cannot feel with, the objections of many ex- 
cellent j)ersons to the so-called Damnatory Clauses. But I believe 
that those objections would die out were the true and ancient 
Catholic doctrine concerning the future state better known among 
us; and therefore, in the event of an explanatory rubric being 
appended to the Creed in our Prayer Book, I should humbly pray 
that it may express, or at least include and allow, that orthodox 
and salutary doctrine. — Believe me, yours with sincere good 
wishes, 

" Charles Kingslby." 
The next is from the Dean of St. Paul's to Dr. Liddon. 

" My dear Liddon, "7fm. 31, 1873. 

"I fully intended to be present at the meeting to-night; but 
it will be impossible for me to reach it in time. I only desire to 
say that the objects of the meeting have my entire concurrence, and 
seem to me to be of the first importance. — Yours ever, 

" E. W. Church." 

The following letters were also read : — 

"Dear Lord Beauchamp, "Batsfged Park, Jan. 30, 1873. 

" Prudence forbids my travelling up to town to-morrow, and 
particularly in this weather. I am what is called going on well, 
but the well is very slow. I am now free from pain, but am ordered 
to keep quiet, and remain in bed half the day. I must be fit to 
attend the meeting of Parliament, and for that purpose must be 
very careful now. Pray let my regret at not being able to attend 
be expressed to the meeting. — Yours very truly, 

" Eedesdale." 

" Walmer Wood, Mortimer, EEADmo, 
" My dear Beauchamp, ''Jem. 30, 1873. 

"I am sorry that I am prevented by a severe cold from 
attending the meeting at St. James's Hall. But I regret it the less 
as I hear that your numbers are overflowing. When I first heard 
of the intention to hold a public meeting in defence of the 



6 



Mr. Henry Hucks Gills. 



Atlianasian Creed, I entertained some doubts of the policy of sucli 
a step. But I fully recognize the importance of obtaining a dis- 
tinct manifestation of tbe opinions of Cburclimen on a question so 
vitally affecting tlie preservation of Christian truth, and I beg to 
express my hearty concurrence in the resolutions proposed for 
adoption. — I remain, my dear Beauchamp, yours sincerely, 

" J. R. Mowbray. 

" The Earl Beauchamp, &c., &c." 

" Dear Lord Beauchamp, "Estcourt, Tetbuey, Jan. 23, 1873. 

"As the time approaches for the conference, which you 
announced to me, to be held in London, for the |)urpose of confirm- 
ing the Archbishop and others in the maintenance of the Athanasian 
Creed unmutilated in our Prayer Book, I write one line to express 
my consent, and to add my name to the list- of supporters of that 
resolution in any form you may think proper to use it. But I can- 
not undertake to attend, or to take an active part in the business. — ■ 
Believe me, my dear Lord, yours faithfully, 

" T. SOTHERON ESTCOURT." 

I have one more document in my hand which is'^a Declaration 
emanating from Oxford : — " We, the undersigned, without express- 
ing any opinion on the advisability of an Explanatory Note, or of a 
Synodical Declaration, desire to express our conviction, that the 
Athanasian Creed in its integrity ought to be retained in its present 
position in the services of the Church of England." 

The above statement is signed by 1562 members of the Church 
of England resident in the University and City of Oxford, and in 
several parishes in the County and Archdeaconry of Oxford and 
the neighbourhood. Of these signatures, 178 are those of clergy- 
men, 116 of churchwardens; and it is signed by Charles Gierke, 
Archdeacon of Oxford. (Cheers.) 

The Chairman. — Before I call upon the first speaker, I ought ^to 
say that I hold in my hand a list of those places that have sent 
delegates. The list comprises 36 counties, more than 100 towns, 
and the number of delegates sent to attend this meeting is more 
tha,n 660. (Cheers.) 

Mr. Henry Hucks Gibbs (Director of the Bank of England) said 
— I accept the task which is imposed upon me of moving the first 
resolution with the more confidence and satisfaction, because I feel 
that this is not a question of High Church or Low Church — not a 



Mr. Henry HiicJcs Gihhs. 



7 



question of cleric or lay distinctively ; but it is a question of the 
heritage of our Christian faith handed down to us from nineteen 
centuries back, and now, as ever, the object of attack. The 
present point of attack, as you all know, is the Athanasian Creed ; 
but the resolution that I have to move has a wider scope; it affirms 
what the Church of England affirms in her Eighth Article, that the 
three Creeds — the Nicene Creed, the Apostles' Creed, and the 
Creed of St. Athanasius — are to be perfectly received and believed, 
for that they may be proved by most certain warrants of Holy 
Scripture. Now, I wish to say that the attacks upon the Athana- 
sian Creed are, to my mind, attacks not only upon that Creed, but 
upon the other Creeds, and upon all dogmatic teaching. I am 
quite sure that of those who feel scruples as regards this Creed 
who wish to amend it, or to mar it, or to discontinue its use in the 
services of the Church, a large majority have no such thought ; 
they have the earnest, but I believe the entirely mistaken, idea 
that they are aiding true religion by the coui'se they are taking. I 
am equally sure that they are unwillingly playing into the hands 
of a small knot of noisy agitators, who know right well what they 
are about, who wish to destroy the dogmatic teaching of the 
Church of England, and who make this, the Athanasian Creed, which 
is the fullest exposition of the doctrine of the Church of England, 
their first point of attack. If they succeed in that attack, the 
time must come when the Church of England as a body will teach 
nothing, for as a body it must believe nothing. (Cheers.) What, 
then, are the allegations that they bring against tliis Creed ? They 
tell us that it is unintelligible, that it is uncharitable, that it is 
contrary to public opinion — (laughter) — and not consonant with 
the spirit of the age. Now, as to its unintelligibility, it seems to 
me that it is intelligible enough for any Christian man ; that if 
there be any difficulties, any unintelligibility in it, equally so there 
are in the other Creeds ; for can any man say that he fully under- 
stands every clause in the Apostles' Creed and in the Nicene 
Creed? The grammatical propositions he can accept and under- 
stand, but the doctrines contained in them are the subjects not of 
intellect, but of faith. (Loud cheers.) They are too wide, too vast, 
for the finite intellect of man, and must be accepted by him as a 
revelation from God Almighty. I think, then, that in the matter of 
intelligibility the three Creeds must stand or fall together, and it is 
my belief that they will stand. Again, we are told that it is un- 
charitable ; but that I deny. The Church in the not damnatory 



8 



Mr. Henry Sucks Gibhs. 



but monitory clauses of this Creed sits in judgment upon no 
individual soul, upon no particular Church. Our Lord has said 
that belief is a necessary condition to salvation, and the Church 
in her three Creeds but recalls the words of her Lord, and, 
summarising the doctrines that she has received from the 
earliest ages, she warns her sons that to them they must keep 
for their soul's health, for in them lies the appointed path of safety. 
The Nicene Creed and the Apostles' Creed have no monitory clauses ; 
but they also must be read in conjunction with the words of our 
Lord to which I have alluded, and, read with those words, their 
warnings are as strong and as severe as the warnings of the Atha- 
nasian Creed. But to M^arn is not the of6.ce of uncharitableness : 
to warn is the office of charity itself. And if it be said that whether 
for condemnation or warning this Creed is offensive to the Eastern 
Church, I say that we must not, then, stop at this Creed, but we 
must go further, and take the Nicene Creed also ; for it is the 
jSTicene Creed which first clashes with the Eastern Church. I leave 
it to others to discuss the difference between the Churches, which I 
believe is but verbal and not real. (Cheers.) I will, however, say 
that in point of charity, again, the three Creeds must stand on the 
same footing, and must be accepted by all of us. Then, again, we 
hear that the Athanasian Creed is not consonant with public opinion. 
Why, sir, if it were not consonant with public opinion, it is not 
now for the first time that we hear of AtJianasius contra mundum ; 
and in this age also the truth will prevail if the world be against it. 
Public opinion ! Why, this crowded meeting that is before me, 
and the meetings that are held all over the country, are an answer 
to the allegation. I believe that the true public opinion of the 
Church of England is in its great majority not against us, but on our 
side. They know that this Creed has existed in its present form 
at least for thirteen centuries ; they know that the doctrines which it 
embodies are drawn from the earliest ages of the Church, before the 
division of the East and West ; they know that at the Eeformation 
the Church of England deliberately adopted those three Creeds, 
and that at every successive revision of her formularies these three 
Creeds have held their own place, and I believe that the great 
majority of the laity and clergy of the Church of England will 
now refuse to alter the status of these three Creeds. Sir, this is a 
layman's question. (Cheers.) The heritage of the faith is the 
heritage alike of the clergy and the laity ; but the clergy are the 
guardians and teachers of this faith ; and for whom do they guard 



Bev. Berdmore Compton. 



9 



it, and to whom do they teach it ? For us, the laity ; to us, the great 
body of the Church ; and I say that it is now time for the laity to 
speak out in defence of their Church. It is for this reason that I, 
a layman, a man of business, unaccustomed to controversy, unde- 
sirous of entering into controversy on Church matters, or any 
other matters, come before you this night to advocate fidelity to 
the faith and the Creeds of the Church, and to express my belief 
that the great majority of the laity of the Church will refuse to 
see their Creeds tampered with, and their faith frittered away, 
and will heartily concur with you in the resolution which I have 
now the honour to propose : — 

" That this meeting fully and unhesitatingly accej)ts the teaching 
of the Church of England, contained in its Eighth Article of Re- 
ligion ; that ' the three Creeds, Nicene Creed, Athanasius's Creed, 
and that which is commonly called the Apostles' Creed, ought 
thoroughly to be received and believed ; for they may be proved 
by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture.' " (Loud cheers.) 

The Rev. Bekdmoee Compton (Rector of St. Paul, Covent 
Garden). — In seconding this resolution, the first sentiment I wish 
to enounce is the echo of that which has been so plainly stated by 
my predecessor — namely, that this is a layman's question much 
more than a clergyman's question. With regard to the holding the 
truth of this resolution, I should be simply a perjured man if I did 
not; (Loud cheers.) I have, I believe, solemnly sworn to it six 
times, and I hold my present position in the Church simply and 
wholly on the faith of adherence to it. Now, with regard to 
the attacks upon the Athanasian Creed which have brought us 
together to-night, they may be mainly divided into attacks upon 
the substance, and attacks ujDon the language. The attacks on the 
substance, so far as they are made within our Church, are headed 
by no less a person than the Dean of Westminster. (Hisses.) I 
leave him to Dean Waterland and Mr. Brewer. I do not think 
this is a fit place to go into these questions, and I propose now to 
direct your attention rather to the attacks on the language of the 
Creed than to those on the substance. What, then, are the attacks 
on the language of the Creed ? First, it is said that it consists 
mainly of the negation of certain abstruse philosophical principles 
which a man cannot understand. To this I answer, in the first 
place, that although they may be abstruse, while they are abstruse 
they can do no harm, and when their abstruseness disappears they 



10 



Bev. Berdmore Comj)ton. 



are wanted. An ignorant man, wlio has not sounded tlie depths of 
the difficulties of the doctrine of the Incarnation and of the Blessed 
Trinity, does not require them, nor can I see that it does him 
any harm to have them declared to him. In support of this 
]3rinciple, I will only remind you that we do not hesitate to teach 
our children the Seventh Commandment. It is not till the ab- 
struseness disappears that it is wanted, and then it is immediately 
wanted. And here let me say that very few persons who raise these 
objections really do believe the Vvhole of the Creed, though it is to 
its language only they profess to object. Some may, but I believe 
they are very few. K'othing can be more remarkable in the ex- 
perience of all those who have lately had to do with this great 
question, than the manner in which the extraordinary ignorance 
and disbelief of many j)eople has come out. For, it must be 
remembered that this Creed contains a great deal more than 
the two prominent chapters — if I may so call them — on the 
doctrines of the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation. It contains, 
besides, most definite announcement of two most importa,nt doc- 
trines — viz. the doctrine of eternal punishment, and the doctrine 
that a right faith is necessary to salvation; and I can only say that 
I have almost invariably found, in talking and discussing this great 
subject with persons who did not agree in maintaining the Creed, 
that it was on one or other of these supplementary subjects that 
they really did not believe in what the Creed taught. When we 
were getting up petitions some time ago to the Lower House of 
Convocation, on this subject, I was talking to two of my friends 
whom I asked to sign the petition. They said they could not sign 
it on account of what they called the Damnatory Clauses. I pointed 
out to them the famous passage in the 16th chapter of St. Mark's 
Gospel, and I showed them that the language of the Damnatory 
Clauses, as they called them, was not stronger than the language of 
our Blessed Lord. Well, one of them immediately said that he 
thought that language was too strong ; and the other said he did 
not believe in eternal 2)unishment at all. Both those men thought 
themselves good Churchmen. (A laugh.) They had gone on 
thinking themselves good Churchmen, and it was not till this 
question arose, and these differences were brought out, that these 
really dangerous doubts came up. Secondly, the objectors to 
the expressions of the Creed find great fault with them for being 
negative ; and I grieve to say that in the pamphlet of the Bishop 
of Salisbury he has to a great degree endorsed these doubts by 



Bev. Berdmore Comj)ton. 



11 



stating in a mosi; careful way tliat, only so far as tlie statements 
of this Creed are affirmative, he believes it to be a most useful 
and venerable document. I am prepared to maintain that negative 
precepts are absolutely necessary for complete instruction when you 
get beyond the very first rudiments of knowledge in almost anything. 
Go to a master of elocution, to be taught to read or speak, which 
many of us so grievously require — (laughter) — and after he has 
found out that you have the power of stringing two or three words 
together, what does he say to you — " Don't drop your voice at 
the end of your sentences ; don't raise it up in what used to be 
called House of Commons twang ; don't play with your watch- 
chain," and twenty more negative precepts ; and you will be 
lucky if you escape without the most pungent of all negative 
teaching, viz. the ludicrous mimicry of your absurd peculiarities. 
It is the same in rowing. As soon as you have the power of 
fsitting in the boat at all, what does an instructor tell you? — 
" Don't look at your oar ; don't stiffen your back ; don't pull your 
arms in till you have done your stroke." It is the same thing with 
skating. As soon as a man can struggle along on a skate at all, 
what does a kind friend tell him ? — Don't look at the ice ; don't 
bend the knee of the leg that is off the ice ; don't stiffen your 
elbows ;" and it is lucky if he does not add a minatory sentence — 
^' If you don't mind what I say you'll fall down." (Cheers.) But 
now to rise to higher things. Even in such elementary instruction 
as the Ten Commandments, as soon as a child or a grown-up 
person arrives at the barest knowledge that he has some duty to 
God and to man, are not seven of the Commandments negative? 
But I can scarcely give you a better illustration of the point than 
by telling you of a conversation I had the other day with one of 
our most eminent architects. He said — " In giving instructions to 
my builders and to my clerks of the works, I always find it neces- 
sary not only to tell them what to do, but also carefully to tell them 
what not to do. I find," he said, " by experience, that I know per- 
fectly well the faults they will fall into unless they are expressly 
warned against them." Sir, I submit that that is j)recisely the 
position of the Catholic Church in framing and keeping before us 
the Athanasian Creed. The Church as early, no doubt, as the 
middle of the fifth century found out by four centuries of ex- 
perience the errors of faith into which her children were liable 
to fall unless they were expressly warned against them. There- 
fore it is that she put before us, under, as I believe, the Divine 



12 



Bev. Bevdinore Comidon. 



guidance, and has maintained ever since, this Creed of St. Atha- 
nasius, containing these negative j)recepts, as supplementary to 
the affirmative precepts of the Nicene Creed. Now, sir, I proceed 
to those well-known clauses, miscalled damnatory. I suppose there 
is hardly a man in this room who does not know that this term is^ 
thoroughly misapplied ; that they are admonitory and not dam- 
natory ; or, if I might venture to put it in rather more legal 
language, they are the announcements of God's law, and not the 
pronouncing of God's sentence. I lament, I must say again, that 
the Bishop of Salisbury ignores this great truth, and I am sure 
that that great truth is, in fact, the main answer to his argument 
against the admonitory clauses in the pamphlet he has lately 
published. I cannot understand how a person's conscience can 
be offended by a declaration of law against special offenceSy 
unless, indeed, the cap fits. (Cheers.) It appears to me to be 
as absurd to object to the law being announced to us in this way 
as it would be for the troops in her Majesty's service to object to 
the articles of war being read to them, as I believe they are, by 
Act of Parliament, every three months. It appears to me that the 
consciences of those who hear these announcements of law ought 
no more to be hurt by it than the conscience of every soldier in 
her Majesty's service is hurt when the officer reads the law 
whereby every one who deserts her Majesty's service is liable to 
the punishment of death ; nor can I conceive any but the most 
ignorant soldier in her Majesty's service mistaking that for a 
sentence of death upon any one else! or thinking it uncharitable 
to intending deserters ! I now approach the remaining argument, 
which has been so much pressed upon us now — that this question^ 
having once been raised, must now be settled, and settled by some 
alteration of the Creed. The Creed, it is said, is unpopular ; people 
do not like it, and some persons sit down when the Creed is said in 
the churches. Sir, I can hardly find words to express my detesta- 
tion of the principle that popular taste is to be the criterion of 
religious practice ! As long as we live on this side the grave, the 
natural man is not crushed in each one of us ; and as long as 
the natural man is alive he will always strive against the Spirit, 
and in striving against the Spirit he, of course, dislikes the 
announcements of the Spirit. We are told in Holy Scripture 
that the office of the Holy Spirit Himself is to " convince the 
world of sin, because they believe not ; " and is it reasonable to 
expect that the world will like to be convinced of sin? Moreover,. 



Bev. Berdmore Comjoton. 



13 



it is said that this fact of unpopiihirity requires that the question 
should be settled somehow. It is argued on behalf of some tender 
consciences that they would be greatly relieved if the question 
was at an end, and they no longer heard this most sacred ques- 
tion publicly and loudly debated among men. I confess to 
have a considerable feeling for them, but that feeling has not 
such force that I can consent for one moment to sacrifice for 
it not only one of the important articles of faith, but not even 
the expression of the important articles of faith. Let me advert 
io a point of Church history which strongly illustrates this. At 
the great Council of Ariminiun in the fourth century, it was 
strongly pressed by the Ai'ians that the word hjxoovcnov, being a 
new word, and not found in Holy Scripture, caused division amongst 
Catholics, and therefore they wished that the word should be re- 
moved from the Creed of Nicsea. The orthodox Bishops at that 
council were weak enough to remove that word, and the conse- 
quence was that immediately after, the Arians thi'oughout the 
whole world boasted that the doctrine of the Council of Nicfea 
was contradicted at that council, and Ai'ianism substituted for it. 
I say this is a great warning to us to stick to our terms as well 
^is to our Faith. And now there is another argument still left 
which must be dealt with, — that this question must be settled 
somehow, and that something must be done to the Creed, simply 
Ijecause the question has been raised. I submit to you, sir, and 
to all this meeting that you will agree with me in this sentiment 
— we are not so anxious to have the question settled at all. I am 
a member of Christ's Church "militant here on earth"' — (loud 
cheers) — and as long as I am a soldier I shall have to fight. If I 
"thought that the enemy would lay down their arms altogether, I 
should be very -stalling to have the question settled in that way ; 
but I am not going to settle the question by either surrendering or 
dismantling any bulwark of our faith. They are not the least likely 
to leave off their assaults if we yield to them on this one point. I 
suppose that no reasonable man can doubt that the next thing we 
should have to do would be to defend the other two Creeds ; there- 
fore, say I, let us go on fighting this, if they choose to fight, till the 
end of the chapter. There are indications, indeed, that the enemy 
are already looking behind them. I believe we have only to stand 
fii'm a little longer, and we shall find that what was the fate of the 
proposals of comprehension in the year 1689 will be the fate of the 
schemes of the present comprehensionists. There is an old story 



14 



Bev. Berclmore Compton. 



i 
i 



of Marshal Saxe, who described the many battles he had been in 
as having all one feature : that the two sides faced each other 
fighting for a long time, and at last one side ran away, and he 
never could make out why they ran away. Here is a piece of 
useful negative precept, viz. that the way to win a battle is not 
to run away. Provided you stand firm, let the other party per- 
form that manoeuvre. (Cheers.) Now, gentlemen, I cannot see 
why we should have any cause whatever for fear. I cannot see 
that the artillery of the present comprehensionists is any heavier 
than the artillery of Tillotson and Burnet. As far as I can under- 
stand what is very difficult to understand, the weapons of the most 
practised controversialist amongst our opponents, even though 
they come from an episcopal quiver, are more like the arrows of a 
dexterous archer, endeavouring to pick off our sentinels, than the 
crushing blows of a Eoman catapult on the ^ walls of our Zion. 
(Cheers.) In this matter I believe that the guns have not surpassed 
the armour. I believe that we are fully capable of maintaining our 
position, that our fort — and, remember, this is our advanced fort — 
is as strong as ever. I cannot say that it might not be possible 
to have the glacis smoothed or the ditch cleaned out. I cannot 
say that possibly something might not be done by an improved 
translation ; but I cannot believe that in the present temper of the 
Church of England the profit of that endeavour would be worth 
the risk. In conclusion, let me avow my belief that this great 
contest, which has now been going on for a good many months 
among us, has already not only done no harm, but a great deal of 
good. I believe it has brought out in the most prominent way that 
which has been far too much kept in the background, even amongst 
the clergy, and that is, the absolute necessity of a right faith in 
order to salvation. I am not afraid to say — I should be a coward 
if I were — that I believe it very possible that a man leading a most 
moral, respectable, and well-conducted life, but not believing any 
more than he chooses of what Almighty God has been pleased to 
reveal to him of Himself, is more offensive in the sight of God 
even than the profligate who, in a humble spirit, is ready as soon 
as he knows it to come unconditionally before the mercy of God. 
(Cheers.) I should be wrong if I did not believe that, when I 
know that the publican and the harlot were nearer the kingdom of 
God than the Pharisee, even though his manner of life be " after 
the most straitest sect of our religion." I believe this contest has 
done a great deal of good in another way. It has dra-^ii an extra- 



The Marquess of Salislury. 



15 



ordinary sliarp and hard line through the Chui'ch — in one respect 
very sadly. It has found out many men as not being really firmly 
attached to the faith, who, we earnestly hoped, would have been 
found so. It may be sad for us, but I believe it is good for the 
camp of God. But secondly, and far more joyfully, it has found out 
many men through the length and breadth of England who are far 
more attached to the faith of Christ than they ever thought them- 
selves to be. (Cheers.) I rejoice most unfeignedly in a line having 
been drawn irrespective of parties, separating a great party of faith 
to stand together, as I hope, immovably and inseparably, united 
together by the Only bond which can safely and permanently unite 
Christian men — the bond of firm, humble, hearty belief in all that 
has been revealed to them. It has parted off this party of faith 
to stand together united in this one determination — to uphold 
the doctrine of the Eighth Article, and to maintain that the 
doctrines of the three Creeds are firmly to be preserved and 
maintained, for they may be proved by most certain warrants of 
Holy Scripture. (Loud cheers.) 

The resolution was carried by acclamation. 

The Marquess of Salisbury (who was received with gTeat cheer- 
ing) said — The resolution vv^hich I have to move is — 

" That this meeting earnestly deprecates, as fraught with danger 
to the preservation of Christian truth throughout the world, any 
mutilation of the Athanasian Creed, or any alteration of its status 
in the Book of Common Prayer." 

The position of things with which we have to deal is this — an 
ancient Creed (which we now know dates from the sixth century) 
representing with exact fidelity the words and phrases of the greatest 
uninspired champion the Christian Church ever produced, round 
which the faith and devotion of thirty generations of Christians 
have entwined themselves — this Creed has come down to our time, 
and for the first time in the history of Europe it is proposed to offer 
an affront to it. We have to ask oui'selves what are the reasons on 
which this course is taken, what are the groimds which can be 
alleged in its behalf, and what are the dangers which it reveals ? 
Of course, there have been many different courses proposed to be 
adopted with reference to this Creed. On the part of those who, 
partly from their own feelings, but I think more often with the 
desire of averting a supposed popular feeling, which perhaps after 
all did not exist, complain of this Creed, a great variety of changes 



16 



The Marquess of Salisbury. 



have been suggested ; but in the main they have resolved themselves 
into two. One of them is that which has been unhappily supported 
by some Bishops of our Church, and which I am bound to say 
has commended itself to a few excellent men, and that is the 
mutilation of the Creed. To me that has always seemed the most 
inp.dmissible proposition that could possibly be made. (Cheers.) 
There is not only that consideration upon which the chairman has 
so forcibly remarked, that this Creed is the inheritance of the whole 
Catholic Church, and no part of the Church can take upon itself to 
tamper with its words ; but tliere is also the fact that these clauses, 
speaking of the retribution of guilty unbelief, only express a doctrine 
which is expressed with quite as much distinctness and force in other 
parts of the formularies of the Church. Until you can get rid of the 
Eighteenth Article, the one anathema which the gentle spirit of our 
Reformers allowed them to insert in the formularies of faith, — the 
Article which states that " they are to be had accursed that presume to 
say that every man shall be saved by the law or sect which he pro- 
fesseth, so that he be diligent to frame his life according to that law 
and the light of nature," — you will not get rid of the objection which 
these gentlemen feel to the warning clauses of the Athanasian 
Creed. Therefore, the whole object which they have in view would 
not be met except by far more drastic measures than they venture 
to propose. I do not like to speak of the purely theological objec- 
tions, for I know there are those coming after me who can dwell 
with a great deal more force than I can upon the terrible danger 
of teaching in this age of scepticism that dogma is a matter of small 
account, and that men may safely tamper with their faith. I do not 
dwell on that ; but do not suppose I pass it by because I lightly 
regard its imjDortance, but because I greatly regard my own in- 
capacity to deal with such a theme. Look, then, at the matter in a 
humbler but more j)ractical view. If you propose in any waj^ to 
alter or mutilate the Athanasian Creed, who is to do it ? (Cheers.) 
Convocation will not. (Loud cheers.) Then, it must be done by 
the House of Commons. ("Oh, oh!") Anyone who has been 
privileged to hear the way in which discussions in committee, on 
any important proposition, are carried on in that House, will not 
feel that it will tend much to the advance of Christian edifxcation 
if the highest doctrines of our faith are submitted to amendments 
and counter amendments, divisions and cross divisions, in that 
highly honourable, but somewhat combative, assembly. (A 
laugh.) Yet that is what you Avill be driven to, if it is allowed 



The Marquess of SaJishurij. 



17 



for one moment that the Legislature of its own mind, and without 
any support or sanction from the Church, is to undertake the- 
task, before which synods of Churchmen have shrunk, of framing- 
new formulas of faith for the acceptance of the Christian Church. 
I, therefore, put aside this question of altering the Creed. Apart 
from theological objections, I put it aside as a thing that in the 
present constitution of the English Government, in the present 
relations between the Church and the State, it would be impossible 
to do. Then, we come to the other proposition— the proposition 
which has the sanction of Lord Shaftesbury's name, and which 
was supported by a memorial he procured in the course of the 
summer. The proposal is that the Creed should be banished from 
its present position in the service of the Church, — not, as I 
understand, dismissed altogether from the Church's considera- 
tion, but iDut upon a kind of retired list — (laughter) — j)ut, as 
a gentleman in the gallery observes, uT)on half-pay, and in that 
condition left upon the formularies of the Church. Now, have 
these 7000 gentlemen who signed the memorial asked themselves 
what their objection really is ? It cannot be an objection to 
substance, because if it was an objection to substance it could 
not possibly have been signed by any clergy of the Established 
Church. We know that the clergy have all stated in the most 
solemn way, and so have many besides the clergy, that this 
Creed is most thoroughly to be received and believed, for it may 
be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scriptm'e ; and we 
know that they are all not only pious but honoiu'able men ; and 
it is perfectly inconceivable that they should join in an objection to 
the substance of that which they have pronounced to be perfectly 
consonant with Holy Scripture. But not only that — the very 
course they propose to pm^sue shows that they do not object to the 
substance of the Creed ; because it is to be left among the formularies^ 
only it is not to be recited in church : in other words, if they object 
to the substance, they are prepared to say that that may be an- 
nounced to the world as the belief of a body of Christians which 
that body of Christians dare not say in the presence of Almighty 
God in chui'ch. That is an inconceivable proposition, and I think 
it is impossible to come to any other conclusion but that these 
7000 gentlemen— (A Voice—'' 3000"*)— these 3000 gentlemen, then 

* The " Voice " was in error. Lord ShaftesLury's memorial had the osten- 
sible support of nearly 7000 names; though it is fail- to add that Lord 
Shaftesbury himself has no means of verifying the genuineness of many of 
these names. — Editor. 

C 



18 



The Marquess of Salishunj. 



—I beg tlieii' pardon for exaggerating their number — object to no- 
tliing^but the form of the Creed. Well, now, I have read a great num- 
ber of objections to tbe form of tbe Creed, I might almost call them 
cavils, and Avliat has struck me in respect of them all is, that tbougb 
they show much learning and great ingenuity, they are all marked 
by an utter want of breadth. They are the criticisms not of men 
accustomed to deal with large masses of mankind, but rather the 
fastidious criticisms of men accustomed to deal with literary pro- 
ductions. I was much struck with the fact that in this memorial 
of 3000 there were several peers, many members of Parliament, 
and many persons well known in London, but there was a very 
beggarly array of chm-chwardens. (Cheers.) There was, in fact, 
a large assemblage of the rich and educated, but of the other por- 
tions of the laity very little account seems to have been taken. I 
am not myself adverse in secular matters to a certain flavour of 
aristocratic doctrine, but I never dreamt of such Toryism as would 
imagine that the objections of peers .and members of Parliament to 
an article of faith were more valuable than those of humbler laymen. 
But there is a lesson to be di'awn fi'om this peculiar proportion. 
It struck me on reading it that it was a proportion not dissimi- 
lar to that which St. Paul observed when he contemplated the 
ranks of the early Christian converts, and possibly for the same 
reason; but, at all events, it shows us that these criticisms and 
objections which are levelled at the Creed are not of a kind 
which can commend themselves to the broad views of the mass 
of men. The mass of men do not understand these fastidious 
objections to mere form. They think of substance, and of substance 
only. They do not inquire whether this Article may be possibly 
offensive to the Greek Church. They do not ask whether that 
Ai'ticle may represent a view of the Divine hypostasis later than 
the Nicfean : they do not enter into subtleties of that kind ; but 
these broad facts are present to their minds — they know this Creed 
has come down through many centuries associated with the most 
sacred doctrines of the Christian Church ; they know it was taken 
by the Eeformers whose names they venerate, and fi'om whose 
fellowship they would not be lightly parted, and put in the fore- 
front in order to mark, at a moment when faith was sorely tried, 
the intensity of the adhesion of the Chui'ch of England to this, the 
foundation of our faith. They know that under the shadow of this 
Creed have rested minds as learned and hearts as holy as any 
Chin-ch has ever produced ; they know that through the thi*ee 



TJie Marquess of Salisbury. 19 

centimes that liave elapsed since this Creed was put into the 
common service of our Church, numbers of men, generations of 
Christian men, certainly not less devoted and less holy than those 
amongst whom we live, have been perfectly satisfied to receive this 
Creed ; and they now know that it has been attacked, in the first 
instance, mainly under the urgency and at the desire of men to 
whom all dogmatic teaching is an abomination. Well, then, if 
you give it up, do you imagine they will think it is on account of a 
criticism of mere form ? Do you imagine they will not see the 
substance behind the form, and that they will not conclude that the 
Church that deserts a position that has been held so long is really 
indifferent to the doctrine which that Creed contains ? I am 
astounded, I confess, at the levity with which many men seem to 
have regarded the effects that will follow from the course which 
they recommend with respect to this Creed. They seem to imagine 
lhat tender consciences are all upon one side. They seem to think 
ihat a man may be very sensitive to words in a Creed which he 
thinks are too strongly expressed, but that it is impossible that any 
man should be sensitive if an affront is put upon the main article of 
the faith which he holds. That is the danger which we have to 
fear. There are two courses which may be pui'sued. It is barely 
possible tbat Parliament may interfere with this Creed ; it is barely 
j/ossible that the Church may give it up. (" Never, never.") If 
Parliament were to interfere with it the evil would be very great. 
Supposing it were to remove the Creed from the Prayer Book and 
j)rohibit its use in church, I fear that the prohibition would be dis- 
Tcgarded — (great cheering) — in such a vast number of instances 
that Parliament would be puzzled to execute its own decrees. If, 
on the other hand, the option, as it is called, of abandoning it were 
given, it would introduce a new party line into the Church, a new 
cause of bitterness and antagonism between parish and parish, new 
controversies, new acrimonies, new sources of paralysis to the 
efforts by which alone religion and civilization can be. carried into 
the masses of ignorance with which we have to deal. But the inter- 
ference of Parliament would be a far lighter evil than the possible 
submission and desertion of the Church. It is a small matter com- 
paratively that consciences would be wounded, and deep resent- 
ments would be excited, and probably a formidable schism would 
be created ; it is a small matter compared with that frightful evil 
that men would come to look upon the Church as having deserted 
her sacred mission, and having sunk to the level of those Protes- 

c 2 



20 



Bev. H. Temple. 



taut communities abroad — at Geneva and in Paris — where tlie 
faith which the Athanasian Creed proclaims has been openly 
abandoned. Such a result might be obtained by the help of those 
scrupulous consciences whom we respect, though we regret their 
efforts; but it would not be the scrupulous consciences that 
would reap the ultimate results. Behind the thin line of 
scrupulous consciences we see the vast forces of unbelief. The 
scrupulous consciences would win the battle ; the forces of imbelief 
would gather the spoils of victory. (Great cheering.) But I need 
not pursue that theme. I feel that it cannot be. (Eenewed cheers.) 
I am sure that the experience of the last few months has taught 
Churchmen and politicians alike that this is not a subject to be 
lightly tampered with. I feel certain, at least, of this — from all 
that in public or in private I have seen, that if at this time, and at 
such a bidding, under such threatening circumstances, with infi- 
delity raging around our walls — if this standard of our faith is in 
any degree resigned, it will not be by the will or with the consent 
of the Church, but it will be done by external force alone ; and 
that to the end the Church will be faithful to the heritage that has 
been handed down to her from olden times. (Loud cheers.) 

Rev. H. Temple (Vicar of St. John's, Leeds). — It will be, I 
fear, only as a feeble, almost voiceless echo of the north that I can 
venture to lift up such a voice as I have in this assembly ; but when 
the Committee requested me this morning to suj)plement the feeble 
efforts I have been making during the last three months as hono- 
rary secretary for the northern province by appearing in this pre- 
sence and speaking here, I felt that the least I could do would be 
to make the attempt. There is no question that the resolution which 
the Marquess of Salisbury has so ably moved, and which I am now- 
trying to second, is the resolution which has provoked criticism up to 
this time, and which will provoke a great deal more ; therefore 1 am 
glad of the opportunity of stating at the outset that I accept it in its 
fulness without the slightest hesitation. (Cheers.) We are taunted, 
you know, by criticism about such expressions as " danger to the 
preservation of Christian truth." Of course we know what that 
means. There is no danger to the truth itself — that we are all per- 
fectly satisfied about — but the danger will be to those, whether 
persons or churches, who, having the truth distinctly and clearly 
set before them, perversely refuse to accept it. Now, let me sjDsak 
on two points that have been already referred to, with reference to 



Bev. H. Temi^le. 



21 



the Creed itself. We are told by our opponents in tliis matter 
that the language of the Creed is obscure. Good people, is this 
what they really mean ? Is it indeed the case that they object to 
the Athanasian Creed because its language is too obscure ? Why 
those clergy of us who labour in large towns know perfectly 
well how rampant Arianism is on every side of us. We know that 
when we hold this Creed up to opponents of that description, and 
place it before them, we are tempted to ask this question — 
" Can you not read it ? Is it not fair writ ? " 

and we almost seem to hear a sort of whisper in return, which dares 
not quite be outspoken, 

" Too fairly, Hubert, for so foul effect." 

It is the doctrine, my lords and gentlemen, it is the doctrine 
that forms the real ground of objection, and this miserable plea of 
obscurity is but stalking-horse No. 1, which is put in the fore- 
front to be knocked down. Now to go on, suppose the Creed 
were, as no doubt considering it on one side it must be admitted 
to be, an obscui'e document — that is, that it expresses as strongly 
and clearly as human language may dare to do, the deepest of 
mysteries — suppose it to be obscure, then, as it cannot help being, 
is that a reason for not reciting it in public ? It is not the only 
obscure document in the world. There is an epistle written by 
St. Paul, called the Epistle to the Colossians. Suppose you 
read that, and try to face the doctrinal part of it thoroughly from 
end to end, I believe you will find it is rather a difficult document. 
Is it, therefore, not to be read in the church ? What does God the 
Holy Ghost say to that ? " When this epistle is read among you, 
cause that it be read also in the Church of the Laodiceans ; and 
that ye likewise read the epistle from Laodicea." I need not now 
go into the question of what is meant by the epistle from Laodicea, 
but, if the generally received idea be the true one, that is not a 
very easy document to make out either. Then, take the epistle to 
the Hebrews. Every one, I suppose, will admit that there are great, 
and deep, and abstruse difficulties there. Is it, then, to be left alone, 
and not studied by Christians and not read in churches ? What 
says the epistle itself? "Therefore ye ought to take the more 
earnest heed to the things which ye have heard." One other 
instance of this sort, and I leave this part of the question. There 
is a book which comes to us written by the beloved disciple, and 
called " The Book of the Eevelation of St. John the Divine." No 



22 



Eev. H. Temfve. 



one will deny that whether that book is to be interpreted chiefljr 
with reference to things that have been, or with reference to things 
that are, or with reference to things that shall be — take it which 
way you will, it teems with difficulties of interpretation. Is it, 
therefore, not to be read in public? "Blessed is he tbat readeth, 
and they that hear the words of this prophecy." What can be 
plainer? But the Marquess of Salisbury hinted at another point which 
I should like to take up. We profess in this age, do we not, that 
we are the Church of the Eeformation. I for one glory in belong- 
ing to the Church of the Eeformation ; and what does that mean ? 
It means that for the last 300 years we have been boasting of an 
open Bible ; we have been boasting of a free religion ; and now we 
are told— and in some degree by those who feel these things very 
strongly indeed — to read all that backwards, and put this Creed 
among some archives, where it can only be reached by the clergy or 
by the learned who have leisure to go into these questions. What 
does that say for the Church of the Eeformation ? Now, we come 
to this other point, the question of what are called the damnatory 
clauses. Eeally, those of us who have studied the question at all 
must be tired of hearing of the anathemas of the Athanasian Creed. 
Why, we know perfectly well that there is not a single anathema in 
the Athanasian Creed from beginning to end ; and I do not know 
whether it would ever have been thought so, but that the word 
seems to alliterate somehow with Athanasian. (Laughter.) I can go 
further and say, not only are there no anathemas in the Athanasian 
Creed, but there are no curses in the Commination Service.. 
There is not a single curse that I remember in the whole 
Prayer Book, except only in certain of the Psalms and some other 
passages which are taken directly verbatim from the Word of 
God. The very essence of an anathema, the very essence of 
a curse, is this, that it be in the imperative mood. Do you 
want to hear a real Scriptural anathema ? This is one, " If ,any 
man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema. Maran- 
atha." If you want to hear the form of a Scriptural curse, here it 
is, " Though we or an angel from heaven preach imto you any other 
gospel than that we have preached unto you, let him be accursed ; " 
' and that, you know, is reiterated with very considerable force in 
the next verse. Now, let me give you what I think is a fair parallel, 
and it is proper to say that the idea is not my own, but that it is 
slightly altered from a very valuable pamphlet that was sent to me 
last week on this subject, by its author, Canon Espin, of Wallasey. 



Bev. H. Temple. 



23 



Suppose that one of ns clergy in this room were to stand up in his 
pulpit, and to preach a sermon from this text — " No murderer hath 
eternal life;" and suppose the preacher were then to say, " Now, look 
fairly at this text, and think w^hat it means — ' No murderer hath 
eternal life ' ; remember, that forbids duelling ; remember, you who 
are of a melancholy temperament, that forbids suicide ; remember, 
you who are statesmen, that God regards the authors of causeless 
wars as murderers; and remember a little more than this, that 
you must search the depths of your own hearts, and bear in mind 
that the very highest authority has told us that he who hates his 
brother is a murderer. Now take that home, and bring the thing 
face to face with yourselves ; and, once again, think of those words, 
' No murderer hath eternal life.' " Which of us could say that a 
preacher who had spoken so, nn. d been cursing anybody? (Loud 
cheers.) Is not the parallel clear with respect to the Athanasian 
Creed? Does not that Creed set out at its very beginning — " Whoso- 
ever wishes to be saved, before all things it is necessary that he 
hold the Catholic Faith." Very well, then it goes on to say, " And 
the Catholic Faith is this," — then it shows those doctrines which 
cluster round the wonderful fact of the existence of the glorious 
Trinity in Unity, and the Incarnation of the Son of God. It sets 
these facts out in detail. It then says, "Now, you must believe 
this, and remember, further, that your belief must lead to action ; 
for, ' they that have done good shall go into life everlasting ; and 
they that have done evil into everlasting fire.' Put all that together 
and then once again I state it — this is the Catholic faith, which 
except a man believe faithfully he cannot be saved." Has the 
Creed been cursing us, then? (Cheers.) Very well, just let me 
put together, before I sit down, those points on which I have laid 
some emphasis ; the danger which is called danger to the preserva- 
tion of truth is really danger to those who perversely reject the truth 
of God when it is fairly set before them; the question of the 
Creed's obscurity, allow it in what sense we may, is no reason 
whatever for refusing to admit of its recitation in public worship : 
and, lastly, the damnatory clauses, as they are called, are in no 
sense whatever anathemas or curses at all. Well, it does us, who 
come from the far end of the country, good to see in London a 
meeting like this. It makes us think that after all the truth of 
God is not likely to perish from the hearts of our own countrymen 
yet. It makes us believe ever more and more distinctly, that the 
Church is the ark of God, and that, however the winds which 



24 



Sir T. Percivcd Eeyicood, Bart. 



blow round Iier may bluster, however tlie waves whicli surge 
under lier may roll, sbe really carries with Christ her Lord on 
board her own calm, her own safety with her, and is strong, even 
xigainst all ap^^earances, to make the peace she does not find. 
(Great cheering.) 

The resolution was carried with much enthusiasm. 

Sir T. Peecival Eeyyv'ood, Bart. — The resolution which I am 
privileged to propose to you this evening is framed in these 
words — 

" That this Meeting pledges itself to employ all lawful means 
for the maintenance, in its integrity, of the Athanasian Creed, 
and of its prescribed use in the Chm'ch of England." If I had the 
command of persuasive language, as those who have preceded me 
this evening have had, I should have gladly welcomed this occasion 
as one upon which I could tell you how intensely I sympathize with 
the objects of this meeting. But I have no facility of language, 
and I have asked the Committee not to request me to speak, but 
only to give me a little v>-ork to do — that I am willing and anxious 
to do. If we are to work there are a few things on which we must be 
entirely agreed ; and oue, I take it, is that if we are, in the words 
of the resolution, to maintain our Creed in its integrity, it will 
only be by establishing it in the affections of the people. (Cheers.) 
Angry controversy, therefore, must be entirely excluded. Of that 
there must be none, either in this meeting or in any of the proceed- 
ings that may follow it. Then, I hope that we are all agreed that 
it will never do for oui' Church to lower her standard of faith to 
meet the wishes of anyone. It is for us to struggle and to pray up 
to a high standard, not for the standard to be brought down to us 
who use no effort and no -pmyev. We censure, and we justly cen- 
sure, a Church that teaches us dogmatic truth more than Scripture 
warrants ; should not we equally ceusure a Church that teaches less 
than Scripture truth ? Each Churchman is a trustee for the faith 
which he has received, and he must hand it on in its integrity to 
his children. You will all have your own especial ways of helping 
to carry out the object of this resolution. For myself, I confess 
my firm conviction is, that one way only will avail, and that is 
for the Church to take back into her own hands the absolute and 
entire education and religious training of her people. (Loud 
cheers.) It is to this work that, in the presence of this great 
meeting, I humbly pledge myself to devote what efforts I can, and 



I 



Bev. Lord Ahvyne Compton, 



25 



in that work I earnestly invite you to join. But whatever method 
you adopt, let us all go hand in hand ; let us work with heart and 
soul, and, although the time may be far distant when we shall have 
regained what we want, it surely will come. (Cheers.) 

The Kev. Lord Alwyne Compton. — I have great satisfaction in 
seconding this resolution, and the more so, because I feel it is one 
that will not require many words from me to commend it to your 
acce|)tance, for in fact it necessarily follows from those you have 
already so enthusiastically carried. You have already af&rmed — 
it is strange that it should need affirmation — your acceptance of 
that Article of the Church of England which declares that the 
three Creeds are to be thoroughly received and believed, because 
they may be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture, 
and in so doing you have set your accejDtance to the whole of the 
Athanasian Creed. I say to the whole of it, because, as we all 
know, it contains at least two distinct parts : it sets forth in the 
first place the necessity of a sound faith for salvation, and it next 
declares what that sound faith consists in ; and it is well known to 
us all that those things in which the sound faith consists are the 
essential articles of the Christian Creed. But while we admit 
that, we cannot forget that the Chui^ch of England applies to the 
whole document the name of the Creed of St. Athanasius, and that it 
applies, therefore, to the whole document that declaration of the 
Eighth Article, that it can be proved by most certain warrants of 
Holy Scripture. We have heard many arguments used against the 
public recitation of the Athanasian Creed in church. The greater 
part of them have always appeared to me extraordinarily weak and 
futile. We have been told that we ought to give up the Creed 
because we are not certain who wrote it, and again, because it has 
not had the acceptance of any General Council ; two arguments 
which, if they were true, would involve giving up the Apostles' 
Creed also. We have been asked also to give it up, because it is 
hard of comprehension ; because some parts of it are exceedingly 
painful to those who read or hear them ; because some parts of it 
touch upon such subjects expressed in human language that there 
is great danger lest ignorant men hearing it, so far from being 
brought to the truth, might actually fall into dangerous heresies 
— three arguments, no doubt, of some weight, but every one of 
them has been applied against the public reading of the Holy 
Scriptures in the church. Lastly, I have actually heard it 



26 



Rev. Lord Aliui/ne Comjjton. 



ai'giied tliat we oiiglit to withdraw this Creed fi'om public use^ 
because in the Church of Rorae it is not commonly known to the 
laitj. (Laughter.) I have heard this argument adduced by men 
who were proud of the name of Protestants, and who seem to 
forget that it has been the boast of our Chm-ch that she has not 
bui'ied any portion of God's truth in a dead language or in 
hidden places such as they wish us to put this Creed into — (loud 
cheers) — but that she has placed it freely and openly before 
the people. But I have heard one argument against the Creed, 
which certainly is a weighty one if true. No one this evening 
has referred to it. I have heard from the lips of clergy that the 
Creed was false. (" Xo, no.") I cannot say that I have heard it 
from the lips of the laity — (loud cheers) — but I have heard that 
said in Convocation and elsewhere, and I must say I heard it with 
very great pain. I felt that if the Creed were false, then no doubt 
those who wished to silence it would be justified ; though not those 
who wished to alter it. I cannot see that the Chui^ch of England 
has any right to alter that which is the common heritage of the 
greater part of Christendom; but we have power over oiu' own 
formularies and services, and the Church of England would be 
bound to alter her Eighth Article, and to cut this Creed out of her 
Common Prayer if that argument were sound. But I have never 
yet heard that argument proved. I have hardly heard an attempt 
to prove it. I have heard a certain amount of popular talk about 
charity — I hardly like to say popular talk about charity, because 
it is far too sacred a thing for having popular talk about ; but I have 
heard no successful attempt to prove that this Creed is false by the 
one test which Churchmen can admit, that it is not according 
to the Word of God. We who defend this Creed are entitled to 
say — " The Chui'ch of England has declared that this Creed is to 
be believed, because it can be proved by the true word of Scripture. 
You say it is false. Prove your assertion by that word of Scripture. 
It is not for us to prove its truth ; it is for you to prove its falsity 
if you can and I have never seen that attempted. Holding then, 
as we have all held to-day, that the Creed is true, and that it can 
be proved to be so by Scripture, we have next resolved that that 
truth is not a truth of light or unimportant character — not a truth 
that may be put aside, but that it is essential to the maintenance 
of Chidstian truth throughout the world ; that any mutilation or 
suppression of this Creed would be exceedingly dangerous to the 
faith. That resolution you have carried already, and if you are 



j 



Eev. Lord Alwyne Com])ton. 



27 



convinced of tliose two facts, tliat it is true and tliat it is necessary 
to maintain that truth publicly, I need hardly impress uj^on yon 
that it is your duty as lovers of truth and lovers of mankind to 
take every legal step in your power to retain that Creed in its 
integrity in the Book of Common Prayer. But I should like 
to say a very few words as to the terms of this resolution, because 
I have found that in the country some persons have misunderstood 
it. It has been supposed that the intention is to pledge this great 
meeting generally and individually to take legal proceedings to 
bring punishment upon such of the clergy as do not use the Creed 
in their services. If such were the meaning of the resolution, I 
for one could not support it. I assume, as a matter of course,, 
that all the clergy are bound to obey the law of the Book 
of Common Prayer, and that those w^ho are set over us in the 
Church are bound to see that w^e do it. As a general rule that is 
perfectly clear. At the same time, I do believe that those who are 
set in authority do possess and ought to use some discretion as to 
how they enforce the laws of the Chui'ch. I think that discretion 
may well be used in this case, for I am perfectly convinced that the 
great mass of the clergy who are in the habit of passing over this 
particular part of their duties do so not from any unsoundness in 
the faith — not from any doubt of the truth they have over and over 
again declared of the Eighth Article, but from motives of policy or 
expediency, from a real feeling for weak consciences, from re- 
membering that " mercy is better than sacrifice," though it may be 
they are mistaken in their application of that text. I should ba 
sorry to punish them for what is, after all, an error of judgment. 
This is not my only reason for saying that such a coui'se would 
be foolish. It is not easy under present circumstances for the 
authorities of the Church of England to enforce her laws ; and the 
only result of trying to do so has been this (it is not my own 
remark) — to mark out to those who are disloyal within her com- 
munion how' near they may go towards breaking the law without 
subjecting themselves to its penalties. The great majority of 
clergy who do not use this Creed are loyal to the truth ; but 
there may be some who are disloyal, and I feel confident, therefore, 
that no greater mistake could be made than to use legal means to 
enforce the use of this Creed ; vexing and harassing the faithful* 
and strengthening the hands of the unfaithful. But that is not 
what you are asked to do. You are asked to pledge yourselves 
to use all lawful means in your power for the maintenance in 



I 



28 Bev. Lord Alwyne Comjpton. 



its integrity of tlie Atlianasian Creed, and of its prescribed use 
in the Church of England; that is, to use all lawful means in 
your power that the Creed shall not be mutilated, that the rubric 
shall not be so altered as to silence it. What the lawful means 
in our power are, may be a question. There are certainly two : 
one is, public meeting and public speech, which we are nov/ 
using; and the other is, the right of petition, which, I believe, 
we shall shortly exercise. But I w^ould remark this, that in 
order to make any alteration in the integrity or the status of 
the Creed, only two courses appear to be possible — the one course, 
which is the pro]3er and constitutional course, would be for 
the Church itself to take action on the subject, and then for the 
State to back up that action. Now, as Lord Salisbury has told you, 
we are safe from that. The Convocations of the Church can take 
no action, unless it is agreed to by the Bishops on the one hand 
and by the clergy on the other. I can only speak of the Lower 
House of the Convocation of Canterbury, of which I am a humble 
member ; and I can assure you there is not the slightest chance of 
our consenting to any such alteration as you .are to-day met to 
protest against. In the regular course, then, there is no fear of 
this Creed being interfered with. The irregular course would 
be for Parliament to act for and by itself, to forbid the use of 
the Creed, and forbid all exercise of Church discipline on the 
subject. I cannot believe that the members of Parliament, your 
representatives, have learned what is now called the great lesson 
of toleration in such a sense as to believe it consists in this — 
that every body of Christians, except one, may manage its own 
affairs ; but that the one body which is established is to be 
legislated for not merely without consulting its wishes, but against 
the known wishes of a great majority cf its members. I have 
no fear of such a result. The wishes of the clergy are well 
known on the subject, as has been shown by the votes of both 
Convocations, and the petitions that have been presented, and I 
am glad to see before me now no slight proof of what the wishes of 
the laity are. I will not go into the question of whether you form the 
majority of the laity in the Church ; but if you are not, you are at 
least a very powerful minority, and I trust you will make your 
voice heard by your representatives. It may be said we are rather 
inconsistent in maintaining a law, and in the same breath saying 
we do not mean to enforce it. It is a plausible argument, but I think 
it is not a sound one. Let me j)ut this to you — Sui3posing a hundred 



Mr. Hoi^ldns. 



29 



years ago we liad had an agitation, not on tlie Atlianasian Creed, 
but on tlie daily service ; and sui^pose the rulers in Church and 
State had met together and said, " What is the use of your rubrics 
about daily prayer ? There are a few cathedrals, no doubt, where 
it is kept up ; there are a few churches in London, one or two in 
other great cities, where daily j)rayers exist ; but what is the use of 
keeping in your Prayer Book such rules as these — one ordering the 
clergy to use the Matins and Evensong daily, either privately or 
openly, and the other that the curate that ministereth in every 
parish church, shall say the same in the parish church — when no 
one obeys them ?" The argument would have been a very plausible 
one in those days, but it is not a plausible one now. (Cheers.) We 
have now learnt that the laws of the Church, at least those which 
are enshrined in the Prayer Book, have a power of executing and 
enforcing themselves, for I need not tell you whom I address that 
in the present day daily prayers are common in numberless churches 
in London, in many great towns, and they are not unknown even 
in many country parishes. That is the consequence of these rubrics 
being in the Book of Common Prayer, without an attempt to 
enforce them ; and I venture to think, if we stand firmly to our 
purpose, and retain the Athanasian Creed in its existing position, 
a similar result will follow. At the present moment we see 
increasing signs of religious feeling, and increasing religious know- 
ledge, the revival of the queen of sciences — theology — and with 
that a revival of almost every form of error and false doctrine 
that has ever been known in the Christian Church. I think these 
circumstances taken together will teach the faithful sons of the 
Church more and more the value of the Athanasian Creed, and 
that when, fifty years hence, some new question arises to agitate 
the Church — some point of the Church's law which men want to 
get rid of — they will be able to point back and say, " See how 
men cried out against the Athanasian Creed, and see how i)opular 
it is now 1" I am certain that our wisdom is not to break uj) the 
old ways of the Church, because men do not tread in them, but 
rather to keep them in sound and good repair, certain that sooner 
or later men will turn back into those old paths, and find that they 
are the paths of safety. (Loud cheers.) 

Mr. Hopkins (a working man). — When the Covenanters of Scot- 
land met in all sorts of places amidst the deep ravines of their 
native mountains to worship God under the blue canopy of heaven. 



so 



ilfr. Alderman Bennett 



tliey met in silence and with compressed lij^s, for tliey did so at 
the peril of tlieir lives. They knew not what might happen before 
they separated, and every man stood, knelt, and prayed, with his 
hands on the hilt of his sword, or on his matchlock, ready at the 
slightest sound of warning to raise his hand in defence of his faith. 
The Covenanters have gone ; two hundred years have passed over 
the world ; still there is warfare in the Christian Church ; and 
now, as then, the working classes form no inconsiderable item on 
the defensive side of the contest. (Cheers.) I stand here as the 
representative of the working classes in a large metropolitan parish 
at the West-end, in which parish I am proud to say the commu- 
nicants of both sexes of that class ma.y be numbered by hundreds. 
I know that many of those are here, and if I am saying anything 
wrong let them contradict me. It has been said that the w^orking 
classes, as a body, are indifferent on matters of religion. It may 
he that, perhaps, the majority are, but whose fault is it ? The first 
forty-five years of my own life were passed in the cold shade of 
neglect ; and it is neglect that has made so many of the working 
classes careless about religion. My own personal knowledge of 
what has taken place amongst the working classes during the five 
years I have been following the blessed privileges of a Christian, 
makes me most unhesitatingly assert that, if properly taught, there 
•are no men in all England more faithful to the Creeds — (cheers) — 
and I may say that of the three Creeds there is not one they are 
more determined to stand by and maintain in its full integrity than 
the Creed of St. Athanasius. (Loud cheers.) I will conclude by 
saying that the resolution which has been moved and seconded has 
my earnest support, and I believe it has the most earnest support 
of all those working men who are really and sincerely good Church- 
men. (Cheers.) 

The resolution was then carried as enthusiastically as the pre- 
ceding two. 

Mr. Alderman Bennett (of Manchester). — The resolution which 
T have the honour to move is this : — " That petitions embody- 
ing the foregoing resolutions be signed by the Chairman, and 
respectfully transmitted to their Graces the Presidents and to 
the Eevs. the Prolocutors of the Convocations of Canterbury 
and York, for presentation to the respective Houses." If these 
two Convocations were united and sat together at Westminster, as 
the English and Irish Parliaments were united years ago, if the 



Mr, Alderman Bennett 



31 



bishops of tlie Cliurcli sat in the Upper House of Convocation as 
bishops, and included everyone in episcopal orders in this country, 
whether diocesan, suffragan, colonial, or retired ; and if the Lower 
House of Convocation was composed of the representatives of 
{ill the 20,000 clergy in priest's orders, whether beneficed or un- 
beneficed, then. Sir, after this great meeting to-night I think we 
might sit down with folded hands and calmly await the result. 
(Cheers.) But we must take Convocation as we find it, and 
although Lord Alwyne Compton, one of its members, said he 
believed Convocation intended to do nothing with respect to the 
Athanasian Creed, let the laity take care that they don't. We are 
so accustomed in the active and busy North to a little agitation 
when we want to do anything, that perhaps I may not be considered 
impertinent if I venture to suggest that in the slow and sluggish 
South you should also, if need be, in defence of this Creed, bring a 
little pressure to bear upon the members of Convocation. I do not 
want you to bring anything but the most gentle pressure possible, 
but I think if it were to go forth from this meeting, or from the Atha- 
nasian Creed Defence Committee, that it was desirable that a little 
pressure should be put upon the Proctors of Convocation by their 
constituents, the respective clergy, then,, perhaps, the Lower House 
of Convocation would not even be disposed to listen to any sugges- 
tion for altering the Creed. I may just refer to what was done in 
the Archdeaconry of Manchester a year ago. The proctors were 
invited to meet the clergy, and consider inter alia the question of 
the use of the Athanasian Creed. After a protracted discussion, 
they came to a resolution, by a very large majority, that it was 
desirable the Creed should be preserved in its integrity ; and the 
proctors of course taking this as an instruction from their con- 
stituents, voted accordingly. There is no very great pressure in 
that. It is at all events a measure that might be imitated by every 
archdeaconry in the country. Perhaps I may be told that there is 
no fear whatever of the Lower House of Convocation, that they 
have always been sound upon the Creed; that if there be any fear 
at all, it is from the Upper House of Convocation. (Cheers.) I may 
be asked what sort of pressure I should be disposed to bring to bear 
upon the bishops. I will tell you. You know. Sir, that the bishops 
being " the creatures of the State " — (laughter) — always look to the 
State for advice and assistance in any doubtful question. We 
all know that when a bishop is preparing his episcopal charge, 
he turns to the laity, ascertains which way the wind blows, and 



32 



Mr. Alderman Bennett. 



charges the clergy accordingly. (Cheers, and some expressions of 
dissent.) Now, you have nothing to do but to instruct the laity a 
little better than they have been instructed with respect to the 
Athanasian Creed, and you bring all the pressure to bear that is 
necessary to influence the bishops. But in what way would you do 
this? I remember in former times it was said that when the 
government of the day wanted to carry any measure, they began by 
tuning the pulpits. Now, Sir, I want to see the pulpits tuned, and 
the key-note to be the Athanasian Creed. In short, I want a series 
of sermons preached by the parochial clergy all over the country, 
taking for their text the Athanasian Creed. (Cheers.) But I should 
like to see something else done in addition. It is astonishing when 
we come to talk with working men in the country — perhaps not the 
working men in London represented by the last speaker— what little 
interest they take in the Athanasian Creed. Why is this ? They say : 
" We so very seldom hear it in the church ; in fact we never hear it 
at that service we attend in the largest numbers " — that is, Evensong. 
Therefore it cannot be wondered at that working men generally 
take so little interest in the Athanasian Creed. I want to recom- 
mend a course whereby the laity shall take a little more part in 
the Athanasian Creed than they have done hitherto ; but before I 
do that I want to remind you what the use of the Athanasian Creed 
was in our early English Church. From the 7th to the 16th 
centui'y the Athanasian Creed was used daily in the Church of 
England. (Cheers.) It was so used in Anglo-Saxon times, and when 
the great S. Osmund, of Sarum, remodelled the Liturgy in his day, 
and gave to his diocese the great Liturgy which we now know by 
the name of the Sarum use— (cheers) — finding that the A thanasian 
Creed had been used for centuries before his time, and used daily, 
he ordered the daily use of it to be continued in the church of 
Sarum, although the Roman use was to have it weekly only, namely, 
on the Sunday. He ordered it to be sung at that particular service, 
the service of prime, when historians tell us that the greater number 
of the people, of the laity, attended. It was essentially the people's 
Creed. (Cheers.) He ordered the Apostles' Creed to be used at the 
same service; but it was said in a different manner. It was the 
priest's Creed. It was said privately by the priest, who did not 
raise his voice above a whisper til] he came to the last clause, 
" the resmTcction of the flesh," and then the people responded in 
the concluding words — " and the life eternal." That was all the use 
that in our early English Church at this particular service, when 



Mr. Alderman Bennett. 



33 



the people most attended, was made of tlie Apostles' Creed. Tlie 
great Creed in those early days was tlie Athanasian Creed, whicli 
w-as always ordered to be sung publicly and openly by both priest 
and people. So it continued down to the time of the Eeformation 
to be used daily in our Church. Then when the seven services 
of the old Church had to be condensed into the two services, the 
Matins and Evensong of the new, of course some portion of the 
old services had to be left out. The Athanasian Creed then ceased 
to be used daily, and the Apostles' Creed was brought in in its 
place ; but still a prominent and honourable place was assigned to 
the x^thanasian Creed. Tt was ordered to be sung or said on the 
four great festivals of the Church, — Christmas, Easter, Ascension, 
and Pentecost, with the addition of the two lesser feasts of Epiphany 
and Trinity. So this great and glorious Creed, which had been 
used 365 times a year up to 1549, was after that time to be used 
only six times in the year ; and that state of things continued 
till the next revision of the Prayer Book, when seven saints' days 
were added, and from that time down to the present the Athanasian 
Creed has been used only thirteen times a year in the church, many 
of those being saints' days, when the great majority of the people do 
not now attend church, so that it is only used in our Sunday Services, 
perhaps four or five times in the year. Can it be wondered at 
then that the people, the working classes, who mostly go to Even- 
song, do not take the interest in it which we should like to see them 
take ? There is no reason, in my opinion, why the Athanasian 
Creed, simultaneously with the sermons which I have just said I 
should like to hear preached, should not be sung as a hymn, at 
Evensong. (Cheers.) I heard it last year, with very great effect, 
in several churches, not only in London, but in the country, 
sung as a processional hymn by the clergy and choir, as they 
marched round the church, and the effect upon the people was 
electrical. They took it u^), and such a singing of the Athanasian 
Creed I never heard before. There may be some churches where 
processional hymns are not used. (Cheers and laughter.) Well, if 
they are not, why should they not sing the Athanasian Creed after 
the third Collect as an Anthem ? Nay, if there be any old-fashioned 
Churchmen of the last-century] type (and I dare say there are a 
great many still who would object to its being sung at Evensong 
at all), why should it not be sung when Evensong is over, in the 
same manner as we now frequently hear the Te Deim sung after a 
Harvest Festival, or on a Thanksgiving Day ? If it be good to 



34 



Bev. Dr. Liddon. 



sing the Te Deum in the evening, why should not it be also right to 
sing the Athanasian Creed in the evening ? If you want the prayer 
of your petition to he gTanted, that petition which you, Sir, are 
about to sign to-night, you must adopt some such means as those 
I have indicated, and if the Houses of Convocation only see that 
your prayer is fervent, you may depend upon it it will be effectual. 
(Loud cheers.) 

Rev. Dr. Liddon, upon rising to address the meeting, was re- 
ceived with great enthusiasm. The assembly rose up en masse, 
and for more than a minute indulged in cheers, waving of hats, 
and other demonstrations of approval. He said — So much has 
been already said to-night, and (if it be not impertinent in me 
to add) so well said, that I might content myself with giving 
exT)ression to the congratulations, or rather, let me say, to the 
thankfulness which is natural at the sight of a meeting, so numerous, 
so unanimous, and governed by such a tone of reverence and earnest- 
ness as the meeting of to-night. You have come together, gentle- 
men, I api^rehend, many of you at great inconvenience and great 
cost to yourselves, to affirm what is in your judgment a great and 
vital principle. That principle is that, so far as in you lies, there 
shall be no organic change whatever in the formularies of the Chm*ch. 
I say, no organic change ; because, of coui^se, it is reasonable to allow 
that there may be changes of a subordinate description, most useful 
and desirable, which it would be our first anxiety to promote. But I 
submit that a change which affects any one of the three Creeds is 
in the nature of an organic change. (Cheers.) It touches the life 
of the Church of England at its centre. The three Creeds, among 
those formularies of devotion which the Chui'ch puts into oui' hands, 
are second only in their authority to the very words of oui- Lord 
Himself ; to the words of that prayer which He taught us to pray, 
to those words, through using which, at His command, we rightly 
administer the Sacraments. They stand upon a different level to 
other compositions which we find in our Prayer Book ; and to touch 
them is to touch its heart. Now, I take it that this is not merely 
a scholastic or theological prejudice. It is, when we come to look 
at it, a fact of experience ; for in the case of any one Christian now 
j)resent — what is the master-thought, or conviction, that forms the 
centre and the core of his life? It is this — a feeling of unutterable 
thankfulness bursting uj) again and again from his heart, even if it 
never finds expression in words, that he, sinner as he is, should have 



Bev. Dr. Liddon. 



35 



been redeemed to freedom from sin and from death. Then comes the 
question, redeemed by whom ? There is no avoiding that question if 
the conviction is to be a reality. You cannot possibly — if you would 
— you cannot put it aside. Certainly here a modern school using 
language which was unheard in the early days of the Church comes 
in, and says that it can answer that question in its own way. I 
recollect seeing some time ago in a French writer the remark that 
if you wanted to get up a revolution you had first of all to find out 
a telling phrase, and then to " work " it. That advice applies to 
Church matters just as much as to political matters ; and accord- 
ingly there has been obtruded on us in all sorts of forms again and 
again during the jDrogress of the Athanasian controversy this par- 
ticular phrase — " We do not believe in a collection of dogmas ; we 
believe in a person." Very well ; let us try to see what that is worth. 
Is there in reaKty any distinction between believing in a j)erson and 
believing in a set of dogmas ? What do you do, when you believe 
in a person ? You cannot believe in any j)erson without believing 
in something about him. You cannot believe in a simple term. 
You can only believe in a proposition ; in a something which is 
affirmed about the simple term. Try to do the other if you can, 
(Cheers.) When you say you believe in a friend, what do you mean ? 
You mean that you believe in his justice, in his generosity, in 
his personal affection for yourself. And when you say you believe 
in God, what do you mean ? You mean, first of all, that you 
believe that He exists {tliat is something about Him) ; that He 
exists of Himself {that is peculiar to Himself); that He is 
powerful, wise, good, benevolent, holy ; that all those attributes, 
in point of fact, are to be predicated of Him which make up in a 
Christian mind the idea of God. You cannot believe in God without 
believing in a large number of propositions, or, if you prefer it, a 
large number of dogmas. (Cheers.) The phrase which is obtruded 
upon us about believing in a person and not believing in a set of 
dogmas offers us only an unsubstantial makeshift, which fades away 
from the mental vision as soon as it is examined. JSTo; if you would 
answer the question by whom you are redeemed, it must be answered 
in this way ;~by the Eternal Son of God, Who took my nature upon 
Him, and Who died for me. That is how St. Paul answered it. 
" God spared not His own Son, but freely gave Him up for us all." 
That is what Hooker means by saying that " the infinite worth of 
the Son of God is the very ground of all things believed concerning 
health and salvation." Put aside that doctrine, and what sort of 

D 2 



36 



Rev. Dr. Liddon. 



explanation can you give of the infinite value of His Blood, of the 
boundless power of His intercession ? These things depend upon 
it. They are unrealities without it. And thus you see how the 
very depths of the necessities of the spiritual life demand a clear 
statement of Christ's Eternal Godhead. Now here, if a man thinks at 
all, two questions at once meet him — How are you to reconcile the 
doctrine thus reached, on the one hand with what we read about 
His true human nature in the Gospels, and on the other hand with 
what conscience tells us, and Christianity repeats to us, about the 
unity of God? You cannot answer those two questions without 
the assistance which you get from such a Creed as the Athanasian 
Creed ; and if there were time for it this evening, I should not 
despair of convincing you between now and twelve o'clock that the 
answer which the Athanasian Creed gives is the only answer that 
can be given to those vital questions. (Loud and prolonged cheers.) 
This is felt to be the truth by the mass of simple believing Chris- 
tians. Only the other day I received a letter, couched in most 
touching terms, from a recently converted New Zealander, who, 
in trying to master the Christian faith, had experienced the greatest 
possible assistance from this very Creed. He urged me in sen- 
tences which I can only say were painful to me — it was painful 
that a Christian convert should ever have to write such a letter to 
a clergyman, — entreating me to do what I could to prevent the with- 
drawal of a document which he had found so precious to his own 
soul from our public services. (Cheers.) Moreover, the influence 
of this Creed is not by any means confined to those who are mem- 
bers of the Church. Some time ago an honoured friend of mine, a 
clergyman in Essex, who may possibly be in this room to verify it, 
mentioned to me the case of a Dissenter who sent to him upon his 
deathbed, and said, among a great many other things, that he 
wished to give him a particular message. " Tell those gentlemen," 
said that Baptist to this clergyman, " who are standing up in your 
Church for the Athanasian Creed, that I entreat them to persevere, 
and that I wish them God-speed, for though I don't attend your 
services I have your Prayer Book, and I have found, in consulting 
your Prayer Book, the greatest possible assistance to my own mind 
and soul in making out to myself what the Bible really does mean 
about God and our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by the help of 
that Creed." (Cheers.) There are two proposals especially which 
have been under the consideration of this meeting for dealing with 
this Creed. One of them is to disuse it. I am not at all prepared 



! 



Bev. Br. Liddon. 



37 



to deny abstractedly tliat it would be possible for a Cliristiau 
Ciiurcli to omit this Creed, or rather to have omitted it from its 
morning service. It is impossible to deny that through the exer- 
cise of the jus liturgicum, as it is called, that inherent right of 
directing the lesser accessories of public worship which is inherent 
in the Episcopate, such an order as this might have been made ; 
but we have not to deal with a technical question of ecclesiastical 
right, but with a great practical fact. We know perfectly well 
that if this Creed were to be withdrawn, it would be withdrawn 
in deference to a challenge which is addressed to us from those 
who, as we cannot refuse to see, deny truths which are taught 
in the Creed. I know it is said by way of consolation that the 
Creed would still be ]3laced in an extremely honourable position 
among the Thirty-nine Articles — (laughter) — but I take it that 
those persons who use that language can never have considered the 
immense difference of value between a document which belongs to 
the universal Church and documents which, however valuable — 
and I have no sort of vvish to depreciate them — do not belong- 
to the imiversal Church, but are strictly documents of our own 
Church. We made them 300 years ago. We might modify them 
to-morrow. We might do away with them to-morrow, and no sort 
of effect would be produced on our relations with the rest of Chris- 
tendom. But the Athanasian Creed is a document which we did not; 
make. It came down to us at the Eeformation along with other 
treasures of the faith from the old unreformed Church. It was one 
of those portions of the old inheritance of the Church which the re- 
formers deliberately adhered to and with much earnestness of purpose. 
For, as has been already pointed out by Mr. Alderman Bennett, one 
of the most remarkable circumstances connected with the recon- 
struction of the formularies at the Eeformation is this ; — that in the 
revision of 1562 — when almost all the other changes that were 
made in the Prayer Book were made in a negative direction — the 
rubric affecting the Athanasian Creed was altered in a positive direc- 
tion. While in the First Book of Edward VI., of 1549, the Creed 
was ordered to be said only six times a year, it was by the deliberate 
act of Archbishop Cranmer, who knew the large advance of Arian 
and Anabaptist opinions in the interval, advisedly increased in 
1552 to thirteen times a year. It would, I maintain, be nothing less 
than an organic change to disuse this Creed. Let us see how the 
change would be spoken of some ten or twenty years after the re- 
solution had been taken. How w^ould the thing look in the distance ' 



38 



Bev. Br. Liddon. 



Would it not be said that for 300 years tlie Cliurcli of England had 
asserted tliat faith, in the doctrines of the Holy Trinity and the In- 
carnation was essential to the salvation of those who conld have it ; 
and that in 1873 she had changed her mind; that she had from that 
date refused to say that these truths were thus essential ? Even 
supposing that the spirit of innovation could be arrested at this 
point, — certainly an improbable supposition, — whatever statements 
of those doctrines might still be found in other parts of the formu- 
laries, it would be true that the Church of England had shrunk from 
the most merciful duty of affirming the necessity of faith in these doc- 
trines for all Christian souls. (Loud cheers.) And this leads me to 
that other proposal for dealing with the Creed, upon which I must 
really make the confession that I feel it difficult to speak with patience 
— the proposal for mutilating it. Can the men who have dared to 
advise us to do this have thought how, on the morrow of the act, 
we should stand in the face of Christendom ? Did we make the 
Creed ? Can we conceive that it is competent for us to mangle a 
document of oecumenical authority ? An old friend and colleague 
of mine, who is now a Bishop, and of whom I must speak — and I 
am sure Mr. Alderman Bennett will bear me out — with much per- 
sonal affection and respect — the Bishop of Manchester, has called 
me publicly to task for elsewhere applying that expression 
" oecumenical " to the Athanasian Creed. But in spite of his lord- 
ship's remarks, I must take the liberty of deliberately repeating the 
epithet. (Laughter and cheers.) From reading his Charge, I pre- 
sume that the Bishop of Manchester is under the impression that 
a document can only become oecumenical by one process, and that 
is, by being pronounced to be of universal authority by an (Ecume- 
nical Council. That, I take leave to say, is a mistake. (Cheers.) 
The oecumenical character of a document may be secured to it by 
the silent instinctive action of the Church, which, without assem- 
bling in synod, and without thus giving formal utterance to its deep 
conviction, quietly decides that a given document has a place in its 
heart and mind which must be universally acknowledged. That 
was, in point of fact, the case with the Holy Scriptures themselves. 
(Cheers.) Does anybody, vfho knows anything whatever of the 
history of the canon of the New Testament, suppose that before the 
fathers of the second and third centuries began to quote those books 
as books from the authority of which no apjDcal whatever could be 
permitted, a great GEcumenical Council had assembled and said — 
" All these books together are infallible, and they form the New 
Testament " ? You will find nothing of the kind in Church history. 



Bev. JDr. Liddon. 



39 



And what liappened to the books of the Now Testament is really 
what happened — I grant, in a more distant age — I grant, by a more 
graduated process — to the Athanasian Creed itself. It has been 
received throughout the West. It is also received in the Eastern 
Church — I have been told so by a Greek Bishop ; I see it appealed 
to in a Greek catechism of the highest authority, as a document of 
first-class importance on dogmatic questions. (Cheers.) But I 
must not detain you longer with discussions of this kind. (Shouts 
of " Go on," and great cheering.) Before I have done, it is neces- 
sary to turn to some personal and, in some respects, more painful 
matters. Gentlemen, the best men I have ever known in the 
Church of England have regarded this maintenance of the Athana- 
sian Creed as a vital question. One, whom I can never name 
without the deepest reverence and affection, the late Bishop of 
Salisbury — (loud cheers) — had this question which now agitates 
the Church before his mind in all its bearings. Some circum- 
stances occurred which obliged him to consider it, and indeed led 
him to form the opinion so early as the spring of the year 1868, that 
before long it would be forced on the Church of England for deci- 
sion ; and after telling me that that was his opinion, he said to me 
one day, after an interval, some words which I can never forget to 
my dying day, and I do not think I am violating his precious con- 
fidence in repeating them to you. He said to me — " I have been 
thinking over that question of the Athanasian Creed, and if they 
tamper with it (the particular form of tampering with it which he 
had before his mind was the project of disusing it), I have made up 
my mind — I will resign my see." (Cheers.) And, gentlemen, any 
one who knew hire, — a man of few words, of simple integrity and 
directness of purpose, — must know that he would have done it ; 
the words never could have passed his lips unless his resolution 
had been equal to carrying them into effect in case the sad neces- 
sity should have occurred. He was taken in mercy to another 
world ere the storm broke upon the Church of England, from 
which we may trust we are now escaping. And so another most 
dear and most honoured friend, the late Mr. Keble — (renewed 
cheering) — the author of those lines about the 

" Calm breathed warning of the kindliest love 
That ever heaved a wakeful mother s breast," 

which describe his value for the warning clauses of this great Creed, 
and which have been so often quoted of late, would, I am certain, 
had he been spared to help us, have made any sacrifice in order to 



40 



Bev. Dr. Liddon. 



preserve to the CliurCli tliis Creed in its integrity. There is one 
more name I Vv'ould mention — the name of one who is still with us, 
but who has been, as probably many of you know, within the last 
ten days as near death as it is possible for a man to be without 
dying — one of w'hom I do not think it is rash to fsay that, if in 
another century the history of the Church of England in this cen- 
tury should be written, his name will stand out as a name of the 
highest eminence when those of almost all his contemporaries are 
forgotten — I mean Dr. Pusey. [At the mention of this name the 
assembly rose and cheered most enthusiastically.] Gentlemen, I 
thank you from my heart for that manifestation of feeling. I thank 
you for it because I am able, through rare good fortune, to read 
to you some words of his which three days ago he dictated, in a 
whisper, from his bed of sickness, to his son, Mr. Philip Pusey. 
His mind was full of this great meeting, at which, had it been 
possible, he would have been present. This is his letter : — 

" Genoa, Piazza Galeazzo Alessi, 
" Monday, January 27, 1873. 

"My dearest Liddoi^t, — Words dictated from a very sick bed 
must be very true. Yes. I wish to express, through you, to the 
meeting, how unchanging, through sickness or health, is my sense 
of the intensity of the crisis with which we were threatened all last 
year, and out of which the Church of England has, by God's mercy^ 
been brought. However men might disguise the question them- 
selves, I could not conceal from myself that the real issue was, 
whether the Church of England should virtually deny that the faith 
in the Holy Trinity, and in the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, was essential to salvation in those who could have it. As 
to the remarks of some in authority, as to the line to which our 
convictions independei tly led us, they cannot have understood the 
strength of our convictions. It was no 'threat,' to give up, in my 
case, the cherished aspirations of a past sixty years to serve God in 
the ministry of the Church of England, the home and the centre of 
one's deepest interests — (cheers) — to go forth not knowing whither 
one went. It was like a moral death ; but with my convictions of 
the issue of that question, I dared no more hesitate than about 
being guilty of parricide. God be thanked for all His mercies-. 
Yoiu" most affectionate, for the Kev. Dr. Pusey, — P. E. Pusey." 

There is nothing that I can possibly add to such a letter as that. 
Only, I think, if he had been here, he would, perhaps, have used 
some words of caution, some words of exculpation, for anything 
that may have seemed to us to have been harshly or inconsiderately 
said or done by those in authority. For he has constantly dwelt 



The Earl of Devon. 



41 



upon this; — Low difficult is tlie position of our rulers in tlie Cliurcli 
of England ; how many are tlie divergent influences which they 
have to control, or between v»'hich they have to mediate ; how often 
it may happen that they are acting from the highest, purest, best 
intentions, when they seem to us to be acting inconsistently, only 
from the sheer difficulties of their situation. Gentlemen, I believe 
that we have before us, amid all our anxieties, a great future for 
the Church of England. (Cheers.) The hearts of young clergy- 
men and of young laymen are being stirred, by the Holy Sj)irit of 
God, as they have not been moved for many a generation. The 
great middle classes of our towns, too long alienated from our 
churches, not through their fault, but through ours, are being again 
drawn within the embrace of their true mother — (cheers) — and I 
cannot believe that He who has done, and is doing, of His mercy 
so much for us, will leave us now. I cannot doubt that He will lead 
us through this dark valley of controversy and struggle, into a 
bright future of coniirmed faith and unimpaired charity beyond it. 
(Great cheering.) 

The Earl of Devon. — I beg your attention while I seek to 
give expression to what I am sure is the sentiment of you all, 
that we should give our hearty thanks to the honourable gentle- 
man who has presided over this meeting ; and in moving that 
resolution I will take the liberty of asking Lord Salisbury ta 
consider himself as in the chair. Gentlemen, it has been with 
great regret that w^e have found ourselves deprived of the pre- 
sidency of the Duke of Marlborough. We knovr that in him we 
should have had a chairman who, from the earliest period of his- 
life, has devoted himself to the extension and the good of th.e 
Church ; but we feel that deprived as we have necessarily been of 
his presence, we have had, in the honourable gentleman who ha& 
presided to-day, one whose exertions have been no less unin- 
terrupted, one v\^hose desire to support the Church has been mani- 
fested by the building of churches, aud by promoting the cause of 
education. (Cheers.) It is with the greatest confidence that I 
shall invite you to ofier the tribute of our thanks to Mr. Hubbard. 
One word only I wish to add, after the addresses which you have 
heard to-day, culminating in that most magnanimous and touching 
address of the last speaker, it would ill become me to add one 
word further than to say, that standing here as a country delegate 
I feel that I am representing the views of the 120 places which 



42 



The Warden of Kehle College. 



liave sent representatives, wlien I say tliat witli one heart and 
mind, and in tlie fulness of our strength, we shall combine with 
you in endeavouring to maintain intact the Creed in whose defence 
we are assembled to-day. We shall do so because we believe it 
contains a statement of dogmatic truth, essentially founded on 
Scriptm'e, and proved by its warrant. We shall do so because we 
believe that the retention in our formularies of dogmatic truth is 
essential no less to the spiritual life than it is to the well-being 
of the Church. I will add no more than to invite you to offer our 
best thanks to Mr. Hubbard. (Cheers.) 

The Warden of Keble College. — In seconding the vote of 
thanks, I can best express my thanks by saying that I recognize 
that coming from a place where we have perhaps great dif&culties 
in perceiving the x^i'actical bearing of movements in the Church, 
T\'here we are not acquainted with the masses of the people, and 
where we are acc[uainted with a number of persons who, in an intel- 
lectual atmosphere singularly charged, are to be ranked amongst 
the " scrupulous consciences " of which mention has been made 
to-night — coming from a place where we find it difficult not to 
sympathize unduly with those scrupulous consciences, and to 
neglect the masses of the faithful — I do recognize that you, Sir, 
have been privileged to preside to-night at a meeting which is 
the expression of a voice that has grown clearer and louder on 
this matter, as the controversy has gone on, a voice which pro- 
nounces that compromise with the attack upon the Athanasian 
Creed is compromise with the forces of infidelity ; that mutilation 
of the Creed is impossible, and that a modification of its use would 
not only be useless as a concession to its assailants, but would 
inflict a wound upon the hearts of those who are most fervent and 
most devout in the service of the Chm'ch ; and would therefore be 
a paralysis of the efforts of the Church of England in her attack 
upon sin and unbelief. (Cheers.) 

The resolution having been put to the meeting by Lord 
Salisbury, and unanimously carried, 

Mr. HuEBAED said : Every one here is here to do his duty to his 
country and his God. You have conferred upon me a great honour, 
and I heartily thank you for the kindness with which you have 
acknowledged my services. 

Bishop Jenuer then pronounced the benediction. 



The Marquess of Bath. 



43 



^ A supplementaiy meeting was simultaneously held at the 
Hanover Square Eooms, and the same resolutions were pro- 
posed and nnanimously adopted. 

The Marquess o'f Batk, in taking the chair, said : My Lords and 
Gentlemen, — Althongh it is with very great regret that I see so 
many excluded from the other meeting, I am sure you will at all 
events agree with me in feeling satisfaction that so large a nmnber, 
after St. James's Hall had been completely filled, should have 
assembled here for the purpose of joining in the protest against the 
suppression of the Athanasian Creed. (Cheers.) I am glad to see 
so many determined to the utmost of their ^^ower to preserve unmu- 
tilated and inviolate that great Confession of the Faith of the 
Church in its Maker and its Redeemer, as He has declared Himself 
to us. I will not weary you with any of those arguments which 
will be laid before you by persons more competent than myself — I 
will only ask you to consider who those are who demand an altera- 
tion of the Creed, and what the authority is on which we ourselves 
rely. On the one hand, we have the authority of the Western 
Church for twelve hundred years ; and not only that, but the 
authority of our own reformers. The Calvinist and the Lutheran 
leaders at the time of the Reformation all accepted this Creed ; and 
the Greek Church, although it does not use it in its public worship? 
equally authorizes, sanctions, and accepts it. And who have you 
on the other side ? You have those who are hostile to Christianity, 
and who wish to deny to the Almighty any powers which are 
beyond those of man — who would, as it were, subject to human 
reason, founded upon human experience, the justice of His decisions 
and the wisdom of His counsels. You have those who tell you 
that they hope soon to see the " Syrian superstition," as they call 
it, swept from the face of the earth. (Cheers ) You have those, 
again, who signed the memorial which was presented to the two 
Archbishops last year. Of these last I wish to speak with the 
greatest respect, for I have no doubt that their motives were most 
excellent and most worthy ; but what do they say about the Creed '? 
They do not deny the truth of a single proposition which it 
contains. They profess to have no difficulty in accepting its 
statements ; but they think it is a stumbling-block, and gives 
offence to others, and therefore they suggest its removal. Now, 
I should like to ask these gentlemen one question — Do they 
suppose that, if this difficulty were out of the way, those on whose 



ll 



44 



Earl Beauchamp. 



behalf they speak would be one bit nearer the Church than they 
are at present ? (Cheers.) Ai-e there no other doctrines ? — is there 
no other practice of the Church of England that gives them offence ? 
YVell, then, if you were to go on eliminating everything to which 
those outside the pale object, the Church would soon be reduced to 
a nonentity. (Cheers.) ^"ay, Christianity itself would eventually 
— I do not say immediately — but it would eventually perish. 
(Renewed cheers.) Various suggestions have been made for the 
alteration of the Creed, or for its relegation to some obscure part of 
the Prayer Book — to the end or to the beginning — but to some 
place which would not be considered a part of our Liturgy. If the 
Creed is true, and contains the truth, it is the bounden duty of the 
Church to teach it; but if it is untrue, and contains heresy, it is 
equally the bounden duty of the Church to forbid it altogether. 
The Church cannot remain neutral. It is bound to teach " the 
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth;" it is equally 
bound to prohibit every kind of error. We must bear in mind that 
in religion all truth is necessary. If we do not believe it to be 
necessary to salvation we do not believe it at all. We cannot in 
religious matters separate between truth and necessary truth. Re- 
ligion is not what seems to be good to every man in his own eyes. 
It is clearly, therefore, the duty of the Church to teach all truth to 
its people, and it is just as clearly its duty to forbid all error. 
There is no middle term which it can adopt between the two 
courses. (Cheers.) It is said that the Athanasian Creed trenches 
on metaphysics ; but it is impossible when you have to deal with 
such questions as religious truth to avoid metaphysics. As an 
humble layman, I wish as strongly as possible to protest against any 
change in that Church, which we have inherited from our fathers, 
and which has remained the pride and strength of this country for 
so many years. (Loud cheers.) I wish in no way to restrict any 
liberty that our Church allows, but I wish to preserve inviolate the 
limits which the wisdom of our reformers has set upon that liberty, 
for I feel that unless those limits are maintained liberty will soon 
degenerate into licence. (Loud cheers.) 

Eael Beauchamp, in moving the first resolution, said — My lords 
and gentlemen, having had a responsible share in those counsels 
which have evoked our great meeting to-night, I wish in the first 
instance to say a few words upon the policy of holding it, because 
I am aware that many persons who entertain a deep affection for 



Earl BeaucJiamp. 



45 



the Athanasian Creed think that the topic is so deep and so holy 
that it ought not to be handled at a public meeting, but ought to 
be reserved for a graver occasion and a more fitting assembly. 
They think, in fact, that we run some risk of profaning holy 
things if we submit them to such a gathering as the present. In 
answer to those who consider that meetings of this description 
are unauthorized, are irregular, and set a precedent full of danger, 
I am constrained to say that the precedent full of danger is not 
in the holding of these meetings, but in the circumstances which 
have rendered these meetings imperatively necessary. (Cheers.) 
It is true that a meeting of this description may be without 
precedent in the history of the Church ; but the circumstances 
are equally so. There were times — there were happy times — when 
we could look upon the Bishops and rulers of the Church as 
defenders of the faith ; but though I wish to speak of our Bishops 
with all respect, I do not think that anyone will in these days regard 
them in that light. (Cheers.) Then, what are we to do? Are we 
to let the Catholic faith which we have inherited from our an- 
cestors be frittered away out of deference to the factious clamour of 
seditious men? The precedent full of danger has been set by 
those in authority, and it is their vacillation, their trimming, and 
their inability to appreciate the circumstances of the Church of 
England, which have rendered it necessary for her faithful lay 
members to give an unmistakeable and undeniable expression to 
their determination. (Loud cheers.) It is said that meetings of 
this kind are unauthorized. Well, those who know anything of 
the history of the Church of England during the last forty years 
will know that many unauthorized things have been done. 
Forty years ago the most ordinary choral service in a parish 
church was unauthorized, and persons in high positions denounced 
in the strongest terms so daring an innovation. Yet what do we 
see now ? Why, it is admitted on all hands that it is impossible 
to sustain any popular, or, to use the cant phrase of the day, 
any " hearty " worship, except by the frequent use of the choral 
service. (Cheers.) I do not wish to raise any controversial 
question, for the movement in defence of the Creed is not promoted 
by any one party in the Church, but has received extensive and 
hearty support from all the schools of thought amongst us. I 
will, therefore, only say that it does not lie in the mouths of 
those in authority who gladly accept the results of the great 
Church revival which they resisted to the uttermost whilst it 



46 



Earl Beauchamj). 



was struggling to win a footing amongst iis, — it does not lie in 
their mouths to tell us that meetings of this kind are unauthorized. 
(Cheers.) So long as a question remains in obscurity, and until 
it has fought its way to success, they may tell us that ; but I don't 
think that after the day which has witnessed our great meet- 
ing the question before us will be considered as wanting in 
authority, for we shall have vindicated to ourselves that which 
in these days is considered the great test of authority, — we 
shall have vindicated to ourselves success. (Loud cheers.) But, 
then, it is said that all this is irregular. I cheerfully admit 
that. It is wholly irregular for laymen to come forward in 
defence of the Church against Bishops and Priests ; but the fault 
of that irregularity lies not with the laymen who meet, but with the 
Bishops and Priests, whose conduct has rendered their meeting 
necessary. (Cheers.) When you have absorbed into your system 
some deadly poison, you v/ill find that if you pursue the even tenour 
of your ordinary life, and do not resort to extraordinary measures 
and extraordinary precautions, you will soon be in a fever, which 
will be followed by the chill torpor of death. The present struggle. 
I am happy to think, and the results of the efforts now made, will settle 
for many years to come the attempt which has been made to poison 
the theology of the Church of England. (Cheers.) It may also 
be observed that meetings of this kind have had one great advan- 
tage. They have shown that those who differ in other respects are 
yet determined to maintain the great verities of the Christian 
religion, and for that purpose are ready to sink all party preposses- 
sions and interests. In proof of this, I may point to the support 
which the movement has received from the Dean of Eipon (Dr, 
McNeile), Mr. Kingsley, Bishop. Ryan, Dr. Liddon, and others, 
who have cheerfully come forward to defend the "faith once 
delivered to the saints," and to preserve for those who may come 
after us the inestimable blessing which we have ourselves inherited 
from our fathers. (Cheers.) 

I wish now to say a few words with respect to a matter upon 
which I may profess to have some personal knowledge. The 
Dean of Westminster, whose picturesque ingenuity can hardly 
be excelled, has published a pamphlet in which he has invested 
the proceedings of the Ritual Commissioners with such wonder- 
ful glamour that he has succeeded in completely bewildering the 
mind of the Archbishop of Canterbury, so that the most reverend 
prelate has adopted some of the most remarkable misrepresentations 



Earl Beauchamp. 



47 



of tlie very reverend gentleman. It is true that tlie course whicli 
was ultimately adopted by Her Majesty's Commissioners was tlie 
recommendation of an explanatory note. It is also true tliat subse- 
quently to the adoption of its report many individual members of 
the Commission, who were animated by various crotchets, and by a 
wonderful distaste for the Athanasian Creed, published their separate 
opinions. The result is this. Hostile as a large number of the 
Commissioners were to the Athanasian Creed, by the good pro- 
vidence of God one party of them was led to confute the other in 
detail, so that whilst a large number wished to see some change, 
they could never agree as to what that change should be. The 
consequence was, that a resolution was adopted in favour of an 
explanatory note — which necessarily implied the retention of the 
Creed in all its present authority — a note not explanatory of the 
Athanasian Creed, but to the effect "that the condemnations in 
that Confession of Faith were to be no otherwise understood than 
as a solemn warning of the peril of those who wilfully reject the 
Catholic faith." I am, therefore, entitled to say that if any con- 
clusion is to be drawn from the Babel of separate opinions with 
respect to the Athanasian Creed, it is, that however hostile to 
that confession of our Christian faith persons may be, they are 
not agreed as to what change should be made, and therefore we 
may legitimately conclude that the formal decision of the Com- 
missioners, recorded in their minutes, gives accurate expression to 
their deliberate judgment that the Creed should be retained as 
now, but with the addition of one explanatory note. (Cheers.) 
Attention has been called to the limited number by which the 
decision of the Commissioners respecting the Athanasian Creed was 
carried, but the majority on that occasion was infinitely larger than 
the majority which carried other rubrics that have been paraded as 
decisions of the Eitual Commissioners. You must therefore do one 
of two things — you must accept the decision of the Eitual Commis - 
sioners or you must not. If you are not to take its decision as a 
full explanation of the opinion arrived at on the question of the 
Athanasian Creed, then you are not entitled to draw any conclusion 
respecting the opinion arrived at on the other subjects which have 
disturbed the mind of the Church. (Cheers.) I am ashamed to 
have taken up so much of your time with these preliminary matters ; 
but having had a share in them, it is, perhaps, not unfitting that I 
should make some reference to them. (Cheers.) 

With regard to the abstract merits of the resolution which I 



48 



Earl Beauchamjp. 



kave to move, I do not tliiiik tliat any attached member of the 
Ohiircli of England will have a word to say against it ; but it may 
be necessary to make an observation in ansvv^er to those who 
tell ns that so long as the opening clauses of the Litany are 
retained, and so long as we have the Nicene Creed, it is not 
worth while to insist on what has caused so much diversity of 
opinion as the Athanasian Creed and its damnatory clauses have 
done. But what does the Athanasian Creed contain ? It contains 
what is of course equally implied in the Apostles' Creed and the 
Creed of Nic^a, but contains it in an explicit form — namely, a 
declaration of the necessity of a right faith to salvation. (Cheers.) 
We are entitled to ask those who are opposed to it, What is it that 
you object to ? Do you object to the assertion that a right faith 
is necessary? Do you object to the definitions contained in the 
Creed ? If you do not object to the statement in the Athanasian 
Creed as to the necessity of a right faith, be good enough to tell 
what is the definition of that right faith which you will accept. 
Do you consider that it is necessary to believe anything ? Because 
if you do, the question becomes one only of degree, and the prin- 
ciple of the damnatory clauses is entirely conceded ; for if you 
will only consider the question so ably and intelligibly put by 
Mr. Woodgate in his recent pamphlet, you will find yourself 
obliged to admit that the position assumed in the Creed is unan- 
swerably right. (Cheers.) But there is another reason why we 
should not listen to proposals for altering the Athanasian Creed. 
These are days when the Creeds and formularies of the Church 
are subjected to narrow scrutiny, and when astute lawyers and 
subtle Privy Councillors will scatter to the winds any practice of 
the Catholic Church, or any tradition of universal Christendom, 
however venerable, unless you can find it within the four corners of 
the Book of Common Prayer. When, therefore", we do find within 
the four corners of the Prayer Book an explicit declaration as to 
the necessity of a right faith to salvation, we ought not lightly to 
part with it. (Cheers.) Those who object to the Athanasian Creed 
must also insist, as you will see if you press home their arguments, 
on the abolition, or mutilation, or improvement — if you prefer that 
word — of the other two. The point which has been dealt upon with 
most rhetorical force is that the Athanasian Creed contains philoso- 
phical and metaphysical terms, such as "person" and "substance." 
Weil, but if that is any reason for giving up the Athanasian Creed, 
it is equally a reason for surrendering the Nicene Creed, which 



Earl Beaucliamp 



49 



contains tlie word " substance," the opening clauses of the Litany 
which contains the word " person," and the proper preface for Trinity 
Sunday, which contains both. (Loud cheers.) I venture to think 
that if you tamper with the Creed of St. Athanasius, with the 
Nicene Creed, and with the Litany, it would be very difficult indeed 
to frame a successful argument for the maintenance in its unim- 
paired integrity of the Creed of the Apostles. (Cheers.) 
But then it is said — 

" For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight. 
His can't be wrong whose life is in the right ; 

— what is the use of all this dogma about which Christians dis- 
agree ? let us find some common ground ; let us amalgamate our 
opinions in works of benevolence ; and let us all set to work and 
love our neighbours." But we have learned that there is an indis- 
soluble connection between faith and morals. (Cheers.) We are 
too apt in this nineteenth century to forget that public opinion 
and Society are based U230n and have profited by eighteen centuries 
of Christianity ; we are apt to overlook the harsh and cruel 
and sensual state of things which prevailed before the preaching 
of the Gospel. Morality and Society of the present day are 
based upon the Christian religion, and I believe it is utterly im- 
possible by mere abstract resolutions of benevolence to sustain the 
framework of Society, and to maintain those bonds which hold us 
all together. (Cheers.) Without definite belief Society has no 
guide for this life, much less have its members a guide for that 
which is to come. Our duty to our neighbour flows from our duty 
to God. If we turn to the pages of the Bible we shall find 
that in one of the earliest cases of conversion on record, that 
of the gaoler at Philippi, the man said — "What must I do to 
be saved ? " And what v/as St, Paul's answer ? Did St. Paul 
say — " Cease to do evil, learn to do well"? Did he say — "Above 
all things put on charity " ? Did he say — " Let your moderation 
be known unto all men " ? All these, indeed, formed a subsequent 
part of the Apostolic teaching; but the answer he gave to the 
question, " What must I do to be saved ? " was — " Believe on the 
Lord Jesus Christ." (Cheers.) And what was that but the 
answer which the Church gives in the Athanasian Creed to the 
same question — " Whosoever will be saved : before all things it is 
necessary that he hold the Catholic faith." And what is the 
Catholic faith but belief in our Lord and Saviour J esus Christ, 

E 



50 



Earl Beauchamp. 



botli God and man? (Cheers.) There remains one outcome of the 
present controversy to which I wish for a moment to refer, — I 
mean the ludicrous result of the controversies raised by Mr. 
Efoulkes, Dr. Swainson, and the Dean of Westminster. Says one, 
" The Creed was written by Paulinns in the 9th century." Says 
another, " Oh, no, it is a combination of floating atoms of various 
date." While the third says both of these statements are true, and 
flits from one theory to another at pleasure. Well, we have 
had science applied in a most remarkable manner to settle the 
cjuestion. It is well known that there is a very ancient MS. of the 
Creed that once belonged to the collection of Sir Eobert Cotton, 
which has since been absorbed into the British Museum. By 
some accident, or conveyance — (a laugh) — this MS. disappeared 
from Sir Eobert Cotton's collection, and it ultimately found its 
way into the University Library at Utrecht. Sir Thomas Duffus 
Hardy, than whom it is impossible that there can be a more com- 
petent authority, has been instructed to examine the MS. as a 
pure matter of science, and give his opinion as to its date. Sir 
Thomas Hardy says that he has no prepossession in favour of the 
Creed — that, in fact, so far as he has any feeling on the subject it 
is against it ; but the conclusion he has come to as a scientific man 
a|)plying the principles of palaeography to the MS. (which is in the 
Latin tongue, and precisely in the same form as that in which we 
now have it), is that it cannot have been written later than the 
end of the sixth century, and that it may be of an age considerably 
anterior to that. (Cheers.) Whatever difflculties there may be 
vdth regard to the age of the Creed itself, it is clear that it cannot 
have been composed by Paulinus, or forged by Alcuin, or imposed 
on Christendom by Charlemagne, but that it must have been 
written at some period before the schism between the East and 
West. It therefore represents the belief of undivided Christendom, 
and answers exactly to the description, " quod semper, quod uNqiie, 
et quod ah omnibus'' (Loud cheers.) Y/hen I think of this Creed 
I am irresistibly reminded of an illustration which is furnished by 
the north-western part of the continent of Europe ; where barriers, 
constructed of feeble materials and by human hands, have for 
centuries rolled back the stormy Avaves of ocean and defied the 
raging sea. Within the 2)rotection of those magnificent dykes, a 
large community pursue their peaceful arts, and enjoy a tranquil 
life in all prosperity and security. In the same way for more than 
twelve hundred and fifty years we have found shelter from the waves 



The Eev. Gregorij, 



51 



of infidelity behind the august barrier of the Athanasiau Creed. 
If the stormy waves beat more fiercely than heretofore against 
this barrier of the Christian Faith, it is for us to take care that 
this possession, which has been such an inestimable blessing to 
ourselves, shall not be destroyed by the open assaults of avowed 
Socinianism, or weakened by the more insidious plots of more 
insidious men. It is for us to watch jealously and to hand it down 
to our posterity, that it may be to all future ages a solid and 
enduring barrier against the cruel waves of dismal unbelief. 
(Loud and long-continued cheering.) 

Canon Gregoet, in seconding the resolution, said — I have heard 
with very great pleasure what my noble friend Lord Beauchamp 
said in vindication of gatherings such as these ; for if we may at 
all anticipate the future, we must foresee that meetings of this 
description may have to be held very much more frequently than 
they have been hitherto. We cannot but feel that though the 
wave of one difficulty may be rolled back by the present successful 
resistance to the efforts which have been made to tamper with the 
Athanasian Greed, yet that there are forces at work throughout the 
length and breadth of the country which must be resisted not by a 
few of our leading people, but by great masses of Churchmen 
showing that they are determined to stand by that which they 
have received from their fathers, and are resolved to hand down 
the faith which they have inherited unimpaired to their children. 
We all know that in the early days of Christianity men had to con- 
tend for the faith which our blessed Lord came down from heaven 
to teach us — to suffer, and if necessary to die for it ; and it would 
seem that in these our days there are deliberate efforts made on all 
sides to deprive us of the blessings of the Gospel which have been 
our heritage ; and that if we would preserve them we must be as 
active in their defence as were our forefathers for their propagation, 
and be as ready to suffer, if necessary, in order to accomplish the 
task entrusted to us, as they were to fulfil their task. The manner 
of the attack upon the Athanasian Creed is worthy of our special 
consideration ; it is a sample of what is being done in other cases. 
We have first open opponents ; and I rejoice that we have some open 
ones, because they are far less dangerous to the cause of truth than 
another class of which I will speak presently. These open oppo- 
nents tell us that the Athanasian Greed " savours of heresy " ; and 
the men who tell us so are men who have subscribed to the 8th 

E 2 



52 



17: e E^:\ E. Gregory. 



ArtiGle; afemiiig tlaat " the iJiree CieedSj Xicene Cieed. Athanasias'' 
Creed/asd that i? coi-moiilv called fhe Ap: sties' Creed., 

ouglit tliGr:;' _l.l7 : :- ivieivcd ue.! ;:-i:ev£a: ::r ::e- 
proTedby 11.:^: - ^■L.iif.i.TS ■;: H^.'- ^:e:^ L'l-v — v, a 

drdnein C::iv;e:.:: : 11, :Le: <;_-i-:^ " ; : a 

of Lere^-^," :.:.::i-er ::::: :Le 

gnage ci :Le My c:i--5f^, -L: - - e c-T-ced 

tliat they were not true, bn: tna: :hey c:n:.::,inid ::.lse'-:.M cf 

Article, c.-! :;:o:."?j <: i :l-ie -erir :e;:i L^il c ; iisilvi 1: viefer- 
ment in :iie CL-rch of Ei^oloe.:", C-eors.i If :n is sueii 
a thing as srra:__^:: ; : "o.r -_;r.':".".r -:r :^,m:::_-" :__:o ir 

seems to me the: ^-m:. Ij h:: : ■i:!. :Lv :.::/.i: ::;s 

■which they hare snbscribed. tL-:- ; ei:iie- to lo. ::o :e- 
TiliiLg that to which thej i::.-: lo:i:.i :l tLeii "nfr .'. os^-m: roil 
consent, or to resign :i. 1 ;o:::o:eo-:-, L:o'. _i_._:- TLer. i?. 
howeverj a second class ci^m- o- ^1:: oi: i^vih :_;:o 'ooioeioos. 
There are ever those ^ho novo:- en tie -rrini's ci a giout ni. de- 
ment, and try to beling to both sides; and on this occasioiL we 
have Ejany s : o. There axe those who tell ns that the Atha- 
nasian Creel o : toins everything that is noHej and grand^ and 
beanrlf v_ t : o : : to t there is no part ©f the whole service whidi 
theyTah:Le se n.-ooh : t.ni re-, tect^th standing the very great value 
which they place nT _ it ti e ill relegate it to the ArticleSj 
where it woijld nevci : : " f or they would strip it of 

its most distinetiYe i-:.:o:_- ; I: T:tt -hil consider for a moment 
what all this really amGnnts : : . t ; - : ill t ; oee see its ntterfolly, 
hoUownesSj and iintnith. Iz i- :o it o l;.l o friend whom yon 
professed to I:~i i: l::,il-.- ti.it ; - ; h.nl i. ; t trust yourself to 
hold converse ~it_ ihi^i ir. tr_: f->. , ':i"t " h_.. . t - o: himin-his- 
grave, that there nf^ft 'm a r_ire r:;.l li"iii_ - :rr athy than 
was possille ~hils: ' ::h were in this ~::hh It is as t^oroh yon 
professed to irei tloo iiiyioit irt- i : \ i '-i yorr iii rl ritoht 
so pall Tipony iir t:.-te. ai.1 .ira-: i o' liM tiio t; 1 ; itv in- 
fluence, that the sooner an end wa ^ It t it t : r i: y; a a i 
honour and love him. ('Cheers." Tio Athanasian 'f::-:.i is either 
tme or it is not. If i: is trot, i" laii-iiii- thv "iot trat_ ~r r:h 
God TTi-m self has ie~o:,li 1. an 1 ^ iti i- ■ i le ; ^ e I hi' i " i eaantt 
hope to be saved. In s.aying this " a ai :■ n . t sonten:rr.j. the heathen 



Tlte Bev. B. Gregory. 



53 



to condemnation. So far from levelling the monitory clauses 
against those who have never heard the truth, we regard those 
clauses chiefly as a vrarning to ourselves — as a solemn admonition 
to ns of the consec|iienGes which must necessarily fall upon us if 
we are not faithful to the truths Clod has placed in our hands. 
{Cheers.) The most dangerous of opponents is he who goes a 
long way with you. and accepts a great deal of what you believe ; 
who professes to value what^you value, and then tries to induce yon 
to betray what you feel to be all-important, to persuacle you to 
abandon what you know you ought to defend. Above all things, 
let us rather have an open enemy than one that tells you he loves 
the Creed, and yet longs to get rid of it. (Loud cheers.) As to 
the proposal for making the use of the Creed optional, I can 
scarcely conceive anything more fatal; because the moment a 
clergyman may or may not nse it, that moment the Creed ceases 
to be part of the belief of the Church of which he is a minister. 
Its words become merely his own words : and when it is left to 
his discretion whether he may employ them or not, their whole 
force and weight are at once necessarily lowered. We have lost 
the Creed unless it speaks the voice of the Church — unless it 
is accepted as the solemn declaration of truth which Ciirist has 
revealed, and which the Church has accepted, and authorita- 
tively placed before us. (Cheers.) The other day the Bishop of 
a very important diocese spoke in the presence of a number of 
persons of the faith of the present day and of the past. He said 
that in the past we saw how earnestly men felt on the subject of 
the faith, and how that numbers were ready to die rather than that 
it should be slighted or dishonoured: whereas, he said, that at 
the present time no such thing could be found at all. And why ? 
If there is one thing more than another necessary to make faith 
real, and true, and deep, it is that it should be definite. It must be so 
placed before us, so adapted to the mind, that it can feel its force and 
reality as far as it is possible for abstract truth to be made definite 
and real to man. Thus it will possess a living force, an actuating 
influence upon the actions and conduct, and not remain something 
on the surface that can only influence opinion. jSTow, is there 
one amongst us who does not feel that in the employment of the 
Athanasiau Creed he finds something of this character ; something 
that makes what he believes more real and true to him, and there- 
fore something upon which he can rest; something to which he 
can turn in every doubt and in every time of distress — something 



54 



The Rev. B. Gregory, 



whicli brings before him tlie personality of our Divine Lord, the 
reality of His Presence, and the true union of His two Natures, 
in a manner which no other Greed does ? It seems to explain 
and enforce Divine truth in a way which deeply affects the heart 
of man, and it is to him as a sure and certain basis upon which he 
feels he may rest. It is a teaching, an explanation, an exposition of 
the other Creeds ; it adds to them a value and a reality which make 
them something more than they v^^ould be without such an authori- 
tative explanation. And yet this same prelate, who lamented the 
great diminution of faith in modern times, who felt that our dimi- 
nished faith made our religion so much less real and deep than was 
that of our forefathers, whom he held up to us for admiration and 
imitation, is one of those who are perfectly willing to give up the 
Athanasian Creed, to mutilate it, to lay it aside, or to allow its 
use to be optional. (Cheers.) We may easily see the reason why 
faith has become so weak. Persons have lost their faith in the 
Athanasian Creed, and so have naturally lost the reality of their 
faith altogether. It is quite certain that faith, to be a principle 
of action, and to give a moral foundation for a man's life, must 
be very definite indeed ; and it is because it has lost definiteness 
that faith has become so obscure and nebulous as it is in so many 
instances. Let us, then, accept this Creed, which has been so merci- 
fully preserved to us through the manifold dangers through which 
the Church has passed during the last twelve centuries; it is a 
trust com^mitted to our faithful keeping ; let us strive to be faith- 
ful to our trust and to preserve it for the future. (Cheers.) For 
this purpose there is need of active assistance from the laity ; and 
I trust that they will always be determined to uphold in its in- 
tegrity that faith which we have received, to resist all rash and 
dangerous changes that may threaten that Church of which we are 
all members. I trust they have shown to-night that we have no 
reason to fear the power of any adversaries, and that the muster- 
ing of their forces will dissipate some of the clouds which tiareaten 
our tranquillity and T\''ell-being. (Cheers.) Eely upon it, the 
strength of the Church v/ill not be consulted by framing vast 
comprehensive schemes to include the largest possible number of 
persons, whatever their belief or want of it may be; for the strength 
of the Church is not in nmnbers, but in the faith and holiness of 
her members. She has to rely for succour and protection upon 
her great Head, and that is secured to her, not by her ranks being 
swelled by a crowd of lukewarm, half-believing, nominal members. 



Earl Nelson. 



55 



but by her couformity to tlie image of lier Lord. Moreover, it 
must be evident to us that it is the earnest depth of piety and the 
reality of the religion of the few, which penetrates the mass, and 
makes the influence of the Church felt throughout the world. If 
then, for the purpose of seeking strength by an addition to her 
numbers, you throw down her bulwarks, you will find that you 
have included not an army of combatants who wdll fight in her 
defence, but a mob who will flee at the first assault. Let us 
therefore boldly rally under the banner of the Church of England, 
the banner of the Church Catholic, the banner which Christ Him- 
self has unfurled and placed in our hands ; let us earnestly con- 
tend for all that has been committed to our keeping, and which I 
trust we shall keep whole and undefiled until the great day of 
account. (Loud cheers.) 

Eael ^TELSON, in moving the second and third resolutions, said — 
There are two great duties which every Christian is bound to 
perform. One is to carry on our Lord's work upon this earth. 
He went about doing good, and seeking everywhere opportunities 
of curing sickness, disease, and suffering of every kind ; and we 
ought, in like manner, to turn to account everything that can 
enable us more truly in our day and generation to carry on the 
great work which He has given us to do. Tliere is another great 
work which, as Christians, we have also had committed to us, and 
if we neglect it w^e shall lose the foundation upon which alone all 
other w^orks can be based. It is to transmit unimpaired to suc- 
ceeding generations the great deposit which, by God's mercy, has 
been entrusted to the Church. (Cheers.) It is with reference to 
this work that we are here to-night. I am not one of those who 
vv'ould wish to curtail the liberty of Christian men : there are great 
truths which many of us hold to be essential — truths indeed which 
our finite minds cannot fathom, and upon which, therefore, dif- 
ferent minds may be permitted to take different views, but we feel 
that in the Athanasian Creed the whole germ of Christianity is at 
stake. We find the three Creeds placed together in our Articles, 
and we may truly call them the title-deeds of our Church. We 
must never forget that the Church of England resolutely and pur- 
posely reformed herself upon the model of the undivided Church. 
The Eeformers never forgot that, and they appealed to a General 
Council, when such General Council could be had, to ratify what 
they had done. They consistently accepted these three Creeds as 



56 



Earl Nelson. 



embodying tlie teacliing of tliG undivided Cliurcli, and placed tliem 
on the same footing, without any distinction of one from another, 
as all eciually provable by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture. 
At this time, when we find infidelity again rampant amongst us, it 
would be most unwise if we were carelessly, or without very serious 
reason, to consent in any manner to tamper with the outworks of 
the faith. (Cheers.) There are two ways in which this attack is 
made u]3on the faith. We have in the backgTound the determined 
opposition of the infidel, and more prominently before us the in- 
sidious attack which comes from people professing, and perchance 
believing themselyes, to be friends of the faith ; and it is curious 
to observe, that as soon as this attack begins upon one Creed, it is 
very apt to develope into an attack upon the others, shomng how 
truly the three Creeds together constitute the deposit of the Chris- 
tian faith. (Cheers.) There is another thing on which I wish to 
insist : — We must be on our guard against doing things in matters 
of religion because they are j)opular. You may be pretty certain 
that popularity of this kind will cost us dearly. We have seen from 
the attacks upon the Athanasian Creed, and upon particular parts of 
it, both what is the real evil which is to be feared at the j^resent day, 
and the necessity — a necessity far greater than we had ever thought 
— of those very parts of the Creed which are assailed. I, for one, 
think it is most essential that we should maintain the damnatory, 
as they are called, but really the admonitory clauses of the Creed, 
because they show that true belief is as much a part of religion as 
pui'ity of life ; and we may depend upon it that he who allows his 
mind to be undisciplined will very soon go wrong in the purity of 
his daily life also. I have seen a great deal written on the subject, but 
we need not go very far to prove that those clauses have the sanction 
of Holy Scripture. We need not go further than modern infidelity 
itself ; for I think we shall find in the writings of infidels of the 
present day accusations against our Blessed Lord Himself, that if 
He had had the power He would have been a persecutor. They 
attempt to prove their case by the warnings which he uttered for 
the benefit of the soul of man ; and surely we. His followers, need 
not be ashamed to bear the rej^roach of our Master. (Loud cheers.) 
The Church never has used these clauses in an unchristian sense ; 
she has never used them for any other purpose than that for which 
similar clauses are used in Holy Scripture itself, namely, as guides 
and securities to prevent men from falling into error. We do not 
curse individual men ; we only warn all men for their own good . 



The Bev. N. Poeoch 



57 



(Cheers.) If, however, we vs^ould really show the world, as our 
blessed Lord showed it, the truth of this assertion, we have only to 
follow His example, and all of ns, in our several spheres, to go 
about striving to do good, as He did. But do not let us think that 
we can do this — do not let us think that the civilization in which 
we glory, and which has_' [arisen from the love of Christ, vnll con- 
tinue — if the foundations of Christianity be overthrown. If, there- 
fore, we would seek to extend our civilization, if we would seek 
those objects which all men say they desire, it is most essential 
that we should maintain inviolate the Christian faith. (Loud 
cheering.) 

The Rev. N. Pocock, in seconding the resolutions, said — After 
the luminous speeches which have been delivered by the noble 
lords and by Canon Gregory it will be unnecessary for me to 
traverse the same ground which they have so ably gone over ; 
and, indeed, there is only one point upon which I feel that I am 
qualified to address you with any authority — I mean the manner in 
which the Athanasian Creed was dealt with by the Eeformers during 
the reigns of Edward VI. and of Queen Elizabeth. But before I 
go^into that matter, will you allow me to say one word upon an 
aspect of the case which is suggested by the terms of the resolu- 
tions ? These resolutions will, I believe, commit the meeting to 
two very different things. One thing to which we shall commit 
ourselves, is a protest against any mutilation of the Creed; the 
other thing to which we shall commit ourselves is a protest against 
any change in its place and status in the Church of England. Now, 
I say that these two things are of very different significance 
indeed. One is a matter of life and death — a matter that involves 
the very existence of the Church of England ; whereas the other 
is merely a question of expediency. We may protest against dis- 
placing the Creed from a position which it has occuT)ied for 320 
years ; but the Church of England can clearly undo what she has 
done. She made the Thirty-nine Articles, and if you want to see 
these Articles abrogated or altered, you have only to a^Dpeal to the 
authorities by which they were sanctioned, namely, to the Convoca- 
tions and to the Parliament of England. I give no opinion as to 
the wisdom or propriety of such a step ; but she has it in her 
power to alter the place which this Creed now occupies in her 
offices. And now I vrill tell you vv'hat the Church of England 
cannot do. It is, I believe, an axiomatic principle of law that 



58 



The Rev. N. Pococh. 



every inferior court is bound by the decision of its superior ; and 
the Cburcli of England, therefore, has no power to touch or alter 
in any way whatever the Athanasian Creed. (Cheers.) It came 
to her from a higher authority than her own. I have not the 
slightest doubt whatever — I believe no theologian could possibly 
doubt — that it was composed as early as the fifth century. There 
is not the slightest shadow of a doubt that it was written some 
time between a.d. 375 and 451. I fix these dates — which give 
a very wide margin — on these grounds. In the year 375 ApoUi- 
naris was condemned by Pope Damasus, and I infer that the Creed- 
must have been written after then, because it contains a very pointed 
allusion to the ApoUinarian heresy in the words, " Of a Eeason- 
able Soul and Human Flesh subsisting." On the other hand, 
it could not possibly have been written after the condemnation 
of the Monophysite heresy by the Council of Chalcedon in 
451, otherwise it would have been more definite with respect 
to the Two Natui'es in Christ. I must say that there are no 
teiTus which sufficiently express my indigTiation at the manner 
in which the name of S. Paulinus of Aquileia has been treated in 
this controversy. We are told that one of the greatest saints of 
his day consented to forge a lie for the purpose of pleasing the 
emperor ! There is no blot whatever on the character of St. 
Paulinus, and yet he is charged with this wickedness for the sake 
of helping Charlemagne, forsooth, to separate the East and West 
by asserting the doctrine of the Double Procession, v/hich is scarcely 
if at all visible in the Creed ! Was there ever such an incredible 
piece of folly and wickedness ? (Loud cheers.) The Creed, then, 
comes down to us with the authority of the West for 1450 years ; it 
has been accepted by the East ; and it has been used in the Church 
of England for more than a thousand years. This can be j^roved, for 
we have the very words of this Creed in the jprofession of Denebert, 
Bishop of Worcester, to Ethelhard, Archbishoj) of Canterbury, in^ the 
year 798 ; and hov/, then, could it have been com230sed in the ninth 
century ? (Cheers.) There have been various attempts to dis- 
i^arage the Athanasian Creed, but we protest altogether against any 
attempt to deprive us of the inheritance which we have received 
from our fathers, and which we are resolved to transmit unmuti- 
lated to our children. (Cheers.) You remember those who said, 
" Nolimus leges Anglim mutciri" and it is for you as members of the 
English Chiu'ch to protest, " Nolumus fidem ecclesice nnitari." 
(Loud cheers.) It would be a sacrifice of the faith to consent to 



Tiie Bev. N. FococL 



59 



the mutilation of the damnatory, or miuatorj, or warning clauses; 
for to omit them would simply be to say that a man is not respon- 
sible for his faith. You cannot take them out. They are at the 
beginning, the middle, and the end, and they cannot be removed 
without desti'oying the whole fabric. It is moreover of the very 
nature of a Creed that it should imply warning clauses ; though it 
does not matter whether they are expressed or not. They are not 
expressed, for instance, in the Apostles' Creed, but they are implied 
by the very nature of a Creed. The sanction of a Creed is our 
blessed Lord's own statement, " He that believeth and is baptized 
shall be saved;" the sanction of an anathema is contained in 
the solemn words — He that believeth not shall be condemned.'* 
(Cheers.) But now I come to the question of expediency ; and 
I can tell you about the history of the Creed at the time of the 
Eeformation, and how it came to be placed where it is. Pre- 
vious to that time it used to be recited in the office of Prime on 
Sundays ; and when the Seformers thought that instead of the old 
houi'Sj they would have a form of daily prayer — which they formed 
by bundling the old services perhaps rather awkwardly together — 
they appointed the Creed to be said on Christmas Day, on the 
Epiphany, on the Feast of the Ascension, and on the three Sundays 
on which it is still siiid. In 1552 it was directed to be used, not 
six but thirteen times a year. Certain Cambridge professors say 
that it was meant to be added to the Apostles" Creed, but I think they 
are wrong, for it is matter of record that it never has been so said. 
However, that question does not matter a straw. The fact remains 
that in 1552 the Eeformers ordered the Creed to be said thirteen 
times a year instead of six. All this is an old story : but what is 
new is the reason why they did so. The reason was that at the 
beginning of the reign of Edvrard YL, foreign Anabaptists came 
over here in shoals, and their teaching soon developed into Arian- 
ism and into a form which did not differ much fi-om the heresy 
of Apollinaris. These persons, who were tried and some of them 
burned, were in the habit of throwing in Archbishop Cranmer's 
teeth that he could not prove his own faith from Holy Scriptui-e, 
but that he got it out of the Athanasian Creed. What, then, ddd 
the Pieformers do ? In the first place, they di^ew up the Eighth 
Ai'ticle, Yv-hich stated that the Athanasian Creed could be proved by 
most certain warrants of Holy Scripture, and they ordered the 
Creed itself to be said thirteen times — on three Sundays and ten 
festivals. The reason why the latter were chosen was because 



60 



The Rev. N. Pocoeh, 



£tt tliat time ttie services on holy days were more frequented than 
now, and that, in point of fact, it was thought the churches would 
probably be better attended on those days than on Sundays. (Cheers.) 
And now let me say one word on the restoration of the unity of the 
Christian Church throughout the world. I suppose we all look 
forward to the time when the Church of England may be the means 
of restoring unity amongst the scattered branches of the "Western 
Church. (Cheers.) Let us hope that the time is not far distant when 
friendly relations between the Church of England and the Western 
Church may be restored. But that before that time comes she must 
have gathered within her bosom many of those who are now Non- 
conformists. But let us not hope that we can gain Nonconformists 
by any scheme of comprehension, alteration, or mutilation of the 
Creed. (Cheers.) Schemes of comj)rehension have never answered, 
and they never will. The only way to gain Nonconformists is by 
teaching in their integrity all the doctrines of the Church. (Cheers.) 
If Nonconformists are to be won only by the sacrifice of the Creed, 
3'-ou will agree with me that the purchase will be too costly. (Loud 
cheers.) If such are to be the conditions of union, I will express 
rny views in the words of the heathen poet — 

" Doris amara suam non intermisceat undam." 

I will add one word more. It has been said before now that such 
a meeting as this is useless because the battle is already won. I 
admit that the battle is very nearly won, and I hope that after 
this meeting it will be won altogether. (Cheers.) But there are 
two dangers ahead yet. There is Convocation, and there is Parlia- 
ment. We are told that the former will probably agree to accept 
some form of synodical declaration that the Church of England 
takes the condemnations in the Athanasian Creed in exactly 
the same sense as the solemn warnings of Holy Scripture. I 
will only say in reference to that proposal that I trust^ Con- 
vocation v/ili never commit itself to such an absurdity. I 
have always thought it was for the Church to interpret the lan- 
guage of Holy Scrij)ture, not for Holy Scripture to interpret the 
language of the Church. (Loud cheers.) But then it is said that 
the authority of Parliament may be brought to bear for the purpose 
of preventing any punishment from being inflicted upon such 
clergymen as may disobey the Church. I trust that we may be 
able to prevent such an anomalous state of things as that would 
be. People now talk a great deal of the separation of Church and 



The Bev. George Williams. 

State ; and I confess, I should regard that as a very great calamity. 
But what is suggested would be the beginning of that separation ; 
for if the State is to interfere to protect disobedient clergymen, it 
would certainly be impossible for the connection to go on much 
longer. (Loud cheers.) 

Admieal Etder having moved the last resolution, — 
The Eev. Geoege Williams, in seconding it, said — There is one 
objection to the Athanasian Creed which, if well founded, would 
come home with peculiar force to my mind, namely, that it inter- 
poses a barrier to the reunion of the East and West. We have been 
told upon high authority — upon that of a gentleman who styles 
himself " the First Presbyter of the Church of England," that the 
Creed anathematizes the whole Eastern Church. I should bo 
exceedingly sorry to believe that that was the case ; and if I thought 
it was, I should feel very differently towards the Athanasian Creed 
from what I do at the present time. In fact, the statement is^ 
altogether a mistake — altogether an error. The Greek Church 
accepts the Creed, and regards it as a most precious document. 
She not only appends it in her Horologion or Book of Common 
Prayer, but she has taken it out of that large collection of prayers 
and documents, and inserted it in a little volume, which I have 
here, called the Synojpsis ; which consists of the cream of the larger 
Service Book. On the title-page it is stated to be " profitable to all 
Christian people ; " and I find imbedded in it the Athanasian Creed, 
as a document of singular value. I remember the first time I 
visited Palestine being very much struck at finding it suspended in 
the Divan of the Greek Archbisho|) of Bethlehem, near the Churcli 
which was erected by St. Helena, over what is supposed to be the 
place of our Lord's Nativity. What is more, the copy which I sav/ 
there actually contained the Double Procession. That fact seems 
to show that there is no such dislike for that expression, save in the 
Nicene Creed, as is commonly thought to exist in the East. I 
suppose it would have been impossible for any copy of the Nicene 
Creed with the Filioque to have been suspended in the Divan of a 
Greek prelate. The real objection to the Filioque is that it is an 
insertion introduced into a Catholic Creed without the consent of 
the whole Church ; and it is an objection which is largely sympa- 
thized in by many who entirely admit the Double Procession from 
eternity. (Cheers.) As for the various proposals which have been 
made for the mutilation or the " muffling " of the Athanasian 



62 



The Rev. George WiUiaras. 



Creed, as the Dean of Isorwicli has so admirably exj)ressed it, 
there is a passage of Scripture which has heen very strongly in my 
mind. I think that this meeting and the great meeting at St. 
James's Hall may well adopt the words of Naboth to Ahab, when 
that King desired to have his plot of ground which lay so con- 
venient to the palace, a,nd which Naboth was so unreasonable as to 
refuse — " God forbid that we should give you the inheritance of 
our fathers!" (Loud cheers.) Those who wish to remove this 
Creed from the Prayer Booli will hardly say — " We will give you a 
better;" and if they offer to buy it at a price, we will reply that it 
contains that which "cannot be gotten for gold, neither can silver 
be weighed for the price thereof," which "is far above rubies." 
(Cheers.) The Athanasian Creed was probably used in the Church 
in England even before the Creed of Mceea. You have heard of 
that admirable paper of Sir T. Duffus Hardy, which I hope will be 
published for the edification of the Church. Sir Thomas's theory 
is that the Utrecht Psalter was brought to England by the eccle- 
siastics in the suite of Queen Bertha for use in her chapel ; and it 
is a remarkable fact, that the copy of the Athanasian Creed which it 
contains is identical with the form which we now use. The Apostles' 
Creed also contains the article respecting the Descent into Hell, 
which was not found in the Eoman and Italian MSS., but which was 
in the Gallican. So again the Gloria in Excelsis, which those who 
know anything about liturgical matters are aware varies in different 
Churches, so that there are scarcely two which have it in exactly 
the same form as it stands in the Utrecht MS., is in that Psalter 
identical with the form in which we still possess it. The English 
Church prior to the Conquest seems to have been a vast deal 
more English than it was after that event ; and since the Eeforma- 
tion it has been more in sympathy with the Anglo-Saxon Church 
than with the Anglo-Norman. It is, at all events, a very interest- 
ing fact, that from the time of St. Augustine's mission to the Con- 
quest, this Creed was in use in the English Church ; and that at a 
period when Mr. Ffoulkes says it had not yet been composed. 
(Cheers.) It vras the practice at that time for English Bishops 
before their consecration to make a Profession of allegiance to 
their Metropolitan. The practice in question was probably intro- 
duced by Archbishop Theodore — that learned Theodore of Tarsus 
to whom the Church of England owes so much, and who, in fact, 
may be said to have formed the English Church as an organized 
body, for before his time it was little more than an aggregate of 



The Marquess of Bath. 



63 



niission stations. We find a singular resemblance between tliese 
acts of profession and tbose vv^bich are made by Bisbops in tbe 
Orthodox Cburcb at tbe present day ; a circumstance wbicb points 
to a common origin, and suggests tbat tbe practice was probably 
brought in by Theodore. Several of these early English professions 
embody regular confessions of faith, all with the Double Procession, 
and some of them in the very words of the Athanasian Creed ; so 
that we see that the Creed must have been in existence in this 
country at that time, and was probably here in the Gallican 
Psalter of Queen Bertha when Augustine set foot on our shores. 
It is therefore an " inheritance of our fathers " in a very emphatic 
sense of the words. (Cheers.) Whatever temptation may threaten 
us, — w^hatever inducement may be held out to us to alienate it, I 
hope we shall resist it, remembering that the one sole object of the 
Christian Church is the maintenance of the Truth. It stands 
for that purpose alone. It is to be the " Pillar and Ground of the 
Truth," and if it comes to be a question between surrendering the 
truth and surrendering life itself, I hope we may be prepared to 
say in the words of the Pagan poet — 

Summum crede nefas animam preeferre pudori, 
Et propter vitam vivendi perdere causas. 

(Loud cheers.) 

The Hon. C. L. Yv^ood in proposing a very cordial vote of thanks 
to the noble chairman, said he thought that what had taken place 
that night would teach the most timid that there was no need of 
fear or misgiving as to the future of the Church of England. 
fLoud cheers.) 

The motion was seconded by the Rev. Beymer Belcher, and 
unanimously agreed to. 

The Marquess of Bath, in acknowledging the compliment, hoped 
that what had taken place that evening would settle, at all events 
for a time, all questions of dealing with the Athanasian Creed. Ifj 
however, that hope should not be realized, and their opponents 
should persevere in their endeavours, he thought that what they had 
seen and heard that night would justify them in urging upon their 
friends both in London and in the country to agitate wherever they 
could, and to persevere in the defence of this great bulwark of the 
Church of England. (Loud cheers.) 
The meeting then broke up. 



LONDON: 

PRINTED BY ■WILD.'.II CLOT^'ES AKD SONS, DCKE STKEET, STAMEOni'' tTKEET^ 
AND CHARING CROSS. 



AUTHORIZED REPORT OF THE 

MEETINGS 

IN 

^Defence of tl)e ^\S^^m%\m Creet) 

WHICH WERE HELD 

IN ST. JAMES'S HALL AND IN THE 
HANOVER SQUARE ROOMS 

On JANUARY 31, 1873. 
'WixX^ an (il^xplanatorfi preface. 

SECOND EDITION 

RIVINGTONS, WATERLOO PLACE. 

HIGH STREET j TRINITY STREET 

SDjcforo I Cambrisge 

1873. 



Eecentlp Pufifebeo 

! ' Tff9l0Bamnatory Clauses " of the Athanasian 

Creed Rationally Explained, in a Letter to the Right Hon, W. E. Gladstone, 
M.P. By the Rev. Malcolm MacColl, M.A., Rector of St. George, Botolph 
' Lane. 

I Crown Svo. 6s. 

"A book characterized by learning, earnestness, subtilty, and eloquence. Mr. MacColl writes well 
and vigorously, and has a very strong grasp of the close connection between faith and morals. No one 
I can say that to Mr. MacColl the Athanasian Creed is a lesson of abstract dogma apart from life. He 
j has shown v^y powerfully the number of points at which doctrinal truths of that highest kind, which 
j deal with the nature of God, touch on actual human life, and in his exposition of some of them, to the 
I illustration of which he brings a curiously wide acquaintance with both old and modern writers in very 
I different fields of literature, he seems to us to leave little to be desired." — Spectator. 

" It is a book not only to read but to ponder over, and to keep on our book-shelves. Mr. MacCoU's 
^ book abounds ^t^9^^ more than any book we ever saw with passages which solicit quotation." — 
jl Literary CJvu^luttan. 

; y^x. IVU^^aEiiscusses more fully than we have seen elsewhere the allegation that the Quicunque 
is noti^^HPn the Roman Church as it is in ours ; and has very valuable illustrations to give on 
■■^^topic. . . He has a letter from Dr. Newman which gives a very clear statement of the 

^^P, and is in itself eminently interesting." — Guardian. 

IK" As a controversialist, too, he reasons with skill, overturns a few of Dean Stanley's statements, 
and. deals hard blows against Mr. Ffoulkes's theory of the authorship and date of the Athanasian 
Creed." — AthetKzum. 

" A well-written, vigorous, and keen composition Mr. MacCoU's book deals incidentally 

with many other Church topics besides the exact points of the Creed — such as the doctrines of free- 
will, eternal^<J(!Sfth, and the Real Presence ; on all of which he has a great deal to say that is worth 
hearing." — Standard. 

" With whatever opponent Mr. MacColl has to deal, he writes in a uniformly Christian spirit, which 
demands our warmest acknowledgment." — Dublin Review. 



The Athanasian Origin of the A thanasian Creed. 

(Ill By J. S. Brewer, M.A., Preacher at the Rolls, and Honorary Fellow of 
Queen's College, Oxford, 

Crown %vo. 3^. 6d. 

jMfc " Valuable as is much that the present controversy has brought out respecting the Quicunque Vult, 
lUPwe are much mistaken if this elaborate comparison of its terminology with the express words of 
Athanasius himself may not prove to be one of its most useful results. How much more there may be 
yet to come as the fruits of further discovery in the way of MSS. and versions, of course we cannot 
say. But here Mr. Brewer has, at all events, made it clearer than ever that the Formulary, in all its 
more striking features, is really little else than a kind of cento or literary mosaic from the Athanasian 
writings themselves." — Literary Churchman. 

" Mr. Brewer has in these pages thrown much valuable light on a dark subject, and one of extreme 
difficultj*. His object is to show the harmony of the Athanasian Creed with the teaching of the .saint 
whose name it bears, and to disprove Mr. Ffoulkes's theory as to its questionable origin. Beyond 
these points, Mr. Brewer goes on to show the absolute necessity of creeds in a Christian Church, and 
gives very substantial reasons for especially retaining that of St. Athanasius." — Standard. 

" The volume presents sufficient evidence of the author's earnest orthodoxy, his acquaintance with 
the writings of St. Athanasius, and some other fathers of like spirit, as well as of a vigorous style. Mr. 
Brewer writes on a subject he has studied minutely, and about which he is qualified to give an opinion. 
A true conservative of all that he deems catholic truth, he contends for its preservation and integrity 
with a manly outspokenness which few combatants would like to emulate in such a cause." — Athenmitn , 

The Athanasian Creed. 

A Speech delivered at a Meeting of the Members of the Cathedral Body of 
Norwich, convened by the Lord Bishop of Norwich to consider the above 
question. By Edward Meyrick Goulburn, D.D., Dean of Norwich. 

%V0. IS. 



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